Microservices, containers, and serverless architectures all solve cross-cutting concerns that impact scalable and distributed architectures, core SaaS & cloud-native challenges, as well as some long running highly pricey problems in the Enterprise space. They're not tech stacks, they are design approaches that tightly align with our modern computing platforms. Googles enormous investments in this space are not random, it's reflective of their relative positioning compared to the rest of the market...
Block-chain tech is awesome in distributed scenarios where actors don't necessarily have contact with, or trust for, one another. That's a very narrow band comparatively.
Yes, people jump on bandwagons. Yes, engineers are often distracted by 'the new hotness'. But when Amazon, Google, MS, and VMware all align on virtualization technology it's something a bit bigger than people simply falling for 'cool tech'.
I see the resemblance but I think it's somewhat different in this case.
Something like Docker brought to light tech that many developers weren't familiar with but that existed before. But it actually accomplished concrete things in a very short amount of time.
Blockchain on the other hand is attractive not necessarily to developers, and it so far has promised a lot more than it has actually delivered. We see talks of huge figures and white papers and half finished products where the important features are coming in "the next milestone".
This is draining investment from others more viable solutions and creating the possibility for any blockchain startup to somehow shoehorn the tech into a product and insert themselves in a market of their choice.
IMO this is the wrong kind of disruption where potentially everyone loses in the mid to long term.
Block-chain tech is awesome in distributed scenarios where actors don't necessarily have contact with, or trust for, one another. That's a very narrow band comparatively.
Yes, people jump on bandwagons. Yes, engineers are often distracted by 'the new hotness'. But when Amazon, Google, MS, and VMware all align on virtualization technology it's something a bit bigger than people simply falling for 'cool tech'.