Software giant Microsoft has debuted a brand new Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) product that permits businesses across industry verticals to deploy a versatile instance of Ethereum tailored specifically for enterprise environments.

Announced on Tuesday, Ethereum Proof-of-Authority on Azure allows enterprises to create applications on an Ethereum blockchain that's not secured by a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm and consequently doesn't need mining — features that are better suited for networks in which participants don't trust each other.

PoW “works nice in anonymous, open networks wherever cryptocurrency promotes security on the network,” said Azure global software engineer Cody Born. “However, in private/consortium networks the underlying ether has no worth.”

Born explained that, since all participants on an enterprise blockchain network are known and reputable, governance can be separated from network operation.

Proof-of-Authority allows network administrators to engage in on-chain voting | Source: Microsoft Azure

To this end, the Proof-of-Authority product options a built-in decentralized application (DApp or dApp) known as the “Governance DApp” that provides consortium members with the authority to govern the network or delegate their voting power to others. Network participants can also delegate different nodes to vote on their behalf within the event that their primary nodes go offline, guaranteeing that all members maintain continual consensus participation.

Network administrators, in turn, can use on-chain voting to vote on and alter network authorities in a transparent and auditable manner.

Along with Azure’s original, PoW-based Ethereum product, blockchains using this new consensus model can be deployed in as little as five minutes, providing enterprises with a “single-click” DLT solution.

To any increase the product’s usability, Microsoft integrated support for sensible contracts designed using Parity’s WebAssembly (Wasm) toolkit, enabling developers to write smart contracts in acquainted programming languages like C, C++, and Rust in stead of learning Solidity, Ethereum’s primary programming language.