Source: cointelegraph.com (original reporting, August 13, 2019)
Google Cloud Expands Its Blockchain Ecosystem
In August 2019, enterprise blockchain platform Cypherium announced a partnership with Google Cloud, giving Google Cloud customers access to Cypherium’s blockchain solutions. The announcement was shared with Cointelegraph on August 13, 2019 via a press release from Cypherium.
The move was part of a broader pattern of Google Cloud building out its blockchain partner ecosystem, adding enterprise-grade distributed ledger technology (DLT) offerings alongside its existing cloud services portfolio.
What Is Cypherium?
Cypherium describes its flagship product, Cypherium Enterprise, as an enterprise-focused blockchain platform built with an emphasis on scalability and decentralization. According to the press release, the platform is designed to support:
- High transaction throughput — Cypherium claims support for thousands of transactions per second, though independent benchmarks were not cited in the announcement.
- Confidentiality — Enterprise-grade privacy controls for sensitive business data.
- Blockchain interoperability — The ability to interact with other blockchain networks, a key requirement for enterprise adoption.
- Java-based smart contracts — Cypherium uses a Turing-complete virtual machine written in Java to execute smart contracts, lowering the technical barrier for developers already familiar with the language.
The use of Java for smart contract development is a deliberate design choice. Java is one of the most widely used programming languages in enterprise software, meaning that a large pool of existing developers can build on Cypherium without needing to learn a blockchain-specific language from scratch.
What the Google Cloud Partnership Means
Under the partnership, Google Cloud customers gain access to Cypherium Enterprise’s blockchain capabilities directly through Google Cloud. This type of cloud marketplace integration is common in enterprise software: it simplifies procurement, billing, and deployment for organizations already invested in a particular cloud platform.
Cypherium CEO Sky Guo commented on the collaboration:
“We’re delighted to be collaborating with Google Cloud to provide enterprises with a full-stack solution to harness the potential of this paradigm-shifting technology. The growing demand in the market for DLT solutions in the financial industry and beyond drives our commitment to this collaboration.”
Sky Guo, CEO, Cypherium
The financial services sector was explicitly named as a key target market, reflecting broader industry interest in using distributed ledger technology to streamline settlement, compliance, and cross-border transactions.
Cypherium’s Multi-Cloud Strategy
The Google Cloud deal was not Cypherium’s only major cloud partnership at the time. According to the press release, Cypherium had also established partnerships with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and IBM Cloud, positioning it as a multi-cloud enterprise blockchain provider. This approach allows enterprise customers to deploy Cypherium’s platform on whichever major cloud infrastructure they already operate.
Google Cloud and Qtum: An Earlier Blockchain Partnership
The Cypherium announcement followed an earlier Google Cloud blockchain partnership reported by Cointelegraph. In May 2019, Google Cloud added Qtum to its roster of software partners. Qtum is a blockchain platform focused on smart contracts and decentralized applications (DApps).
Google Cloud’s Qtum integration included a developer-focused suite of tools:
- DApp development tools
- Support for launching a full Qtum node on Google Cloud infrastructure
- Tools for forking and staking within the Qtum network
A notable feature of the Qtum integration was automatic source code updates. According to the announcement at the time:
“When the Qtum source code is updated, Google Cloud will automatically update the code everywhere, saving developers the need to manually re-download in order to remain on the latest version.”
This approach reduces the operational overhead for development teams maintaining blockchain nodes, a common pain point in enterprise blockchain deployments.
Context: Enterprise Blockchain in 2019
These partnerships reflect a period of significant activity in enterprise blockchain adoption. Major cloud providers were competing to attract blockchain projects to their platforms, both to capture new workloads and to differentiate their developer ecosystems. For blockchain projects, cloud marketplace listings provided distribution, credibility, and easier access to enterprise customers.
Key themes driving enterprise blockchain interest at the time included interoperability between chains, high-throughput transaction processing, and the integration of familiar development languages and toolchains — all areas that Cypherium specifically targeted with its platform design.