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Azure Blockchain Service Ending in September

The Azure Blockchain service will end on Sept. 10, 2021, according to a recently updated Microsoft document.

Microsoft apparently didn’t issue any other public announcement about the end of its electronic distributed ledger service. The document, which is about migrating to other blockchain services besides Azure Blockchain, just includes a brief note about the service’s end.

Here’s that note:

On September 10, 2021, Azure Blockchain will be retired. Please migrate ledger data from Azure Blockchain Service to an alternative offering based on your development status in production or evaluation.

The document suggested that Azure Blockchain users should migrate their data over to the Quorum Blockchain service hosted on Azure, which is offered by ConsenSys, before the September end date. The Quorum Blockchain service is a managed service offering that “has no extra management overhead compared to Azure Blockchain Service,” the document indicated.

ConsenSys has been an early partner with Microsoft on blockchain technologies, including the Ethereum blockchain-as-a-service offering.

The end of the Azure Blockchain service does not appear in Microsoft’s 2021 end-of-support  products list. However, Azure Blockchain seems to never have gotten out of the preview stage. Its product landing page still displays the preview label, with no clue on the service’s impending end.

Microsoft was charging for using the Azure Blockchain preview, with costs based on the node options selected and the storage space that was used. The Azure Blockchain preview landing page showed General Electric, J.P.Morgan, Singapore Airlines and Starbucks as customers.

Veteran Microsoft reporter Mary Jo Foley seems to have been the first to notice the end of the Azure Blockchain service per this ZDNet article. The origins of the Azure Blockchain service started in 2015. The service seems to have been first launched in preview form in May of 2019, per press accounts.