Earlier this month Microsoft Corp. announced the Coco Framework, an innovation that is presumed to advance enterprise adoption of blockchain technology.

Microsoft blog provides the details about this framework and its partnership with Intel. The Coco Framework reduces the complexity of development techniques, and when integrated with blockchain networks addresses needs like high-transaction speed, distributed governance and confidentiality. The framework provides blockchain’s distributed tech with speed up to 1,600 transactions per second and high level of security. With these capabilities, the scope of adoption widens and real-world blockchain scenarios can be imagined across industries — like financial services, supply chain and logistics, healthcare and retail.

“Blockchain is a transformational technology with the ability to significantly reduce the friction of doing business,” said Mark Russinovich, chief technology officer of Azure at Microsoft. “Microsoft is committed to bringing blockchain to the enterprise. We have listened to the needs of our customers and the blockchain community and are bringing foundational functionality with the Coco Framework. Through an innovative combination of advanced algorithms and trusted execution environments (TEEs), like Intel’s Software Guard Extensions (SGX) or Windows Virtual Secure Mode (VSM), we believe this takes the next step toward making blockchain ready for business.”

Although Coco should work with any operating system and hypervisor (virtual machine monitor) that supports the right trusted execution environments, you need Microsoft’s Azure cloud services and Intel hardware. Microsoft and Intel ultimately plan to offer the work from Coco as part of an open source project in 2018, though, and there are already takers like Ethereum and JP Morgan.

More information on the Coco Framework, including links to the technical white paper and technical demo, can be found at http://www.aka.ms/cocoframework.