Preface
We would like to thank our readers for taking time to consume our collective body of work that is representative of the practice, experience, and knowledge gained throughout our careers.
This book was motivated by the desire that we and others have had to contribute to the evolution of blockchain technologies. We were also challenged by a lack of a comprehensive guide that addresses myriad considerations, including but not limited to technology design choices, architecture choices, business considerations, and governance models. We represent a unique and diverse set of skills, and we have strived to cover a lot of ground in this book. We have collectively focused on organization and flow to ensure not only an easy-to-follow and natural flow but also topical modularity.
The contents of this book are aimed at addressing a diverse audience, from business leaders to blockchain developers and anyone who would like to learn from the practitioners' experience expressed in this book. We believe that not only will the audience enjoy and benefit personally and professionally from the book, but also this book will be used as reference material, a handbook of sorts, and aid in making informed design decisions. We encountered various challenges while writing this book, including our own demanding schedules, but ensured that we delivered up-to-date information at the time of publication. The blockchain technology landscape is in flux and keeping up with evolution and innovation is a challenge. We have attempted to distill a model that will enable the reader to create a framework to methodically consume blockchain-related updates and build upon the foundation laid in this book. We have also expended a lot of energy in addressing business design and resulting technology design choices, because unlike other pure technology platforms, blockchain (particularly blockchain-powered business networks) is a very business-specific and technology-centric discipline.
We hope the findings and documented considerations from practitioners will arm business leaders and technology managers in making informed decisions and avoiding the failures experienced by the authors.
The technical content covered in this book aims to provide a solid foundation for a diverse set of skills to people such as IT professionals, blockchain novices, and advanced blockchain developers. Modeled after a real-world use case, the application development story weaves in various steps from infrastructure creation to DevOps models and model-driven development, covering various enterprise technology management challenges with a focus on the blockchain network-centric impact of application deployment. We have provided a framework for security and performance design that we hope the technical audience finds particularly helpful in establishing a solid foundation as a technology-design consideration.
We'll conclude the book with a pragmatic overview of various challenges and related opportunities, and call for the community of readers to rise to the challenges and reap the rewards of the resulting opportunities. While this book focuses on Hyperledger Fabric, we expect the core topics covered in this book to be universally applicable to the blockchain technology discipline. We sincerely hope that our effort and acumen is well received by our readers and arms them with a strong foundation to make impactful contributions to progressing the blockchain innovation agenda.
