AlphaPoint, blockchain, Microsoft Azure: a partnership as easy as A, B, Z

Founded in 2013, AlphaPoint is a rapidly growing financial technology (FinTech) company that specializes in blockchain technology solutions. Blockchain is a series of blocks—records of data—that are time-stamped, linked, and secured. These records of data are verifiable and permanent, so they lend themselves to all sorts of practical purposes, like records management applications, identity management, and voting databases. What AlphaPoint has managed to do, however, is take a mundane application for blockchain, like organizing data, and apply it to the front of their office. The results have been pretty exciting.

AlphaPoint and blockchain: paying the successes forward

Ted Pendleton, Senior Vice President for AlphaPoint explains. “We’re a blockchain-based company that, unlike all others I can think of, focuses on front-office business use cases that add value to the company, including adding revenue to the companies that we serve.”

One of the innovative ways that AlphaPoint adds value to their clients’ portfolios is by making markets liquid that are normally illiquid—commodities, currencies, exclusive goods, Initial Coin Offerings (ICO), loans, and private shares. Blockchain platforms make these markets exchangeable, and the automation in trading that AlphaPoint provides greatly reduces costs to their clients.

“Because we are a trading platform, or an exchange platform, that drives the business for many of these firms—it’s the greatest business value to many of our customers,” Pendleton said. AlphaPoint focuses all their attention on making everything easier for their customers—from what kind of business they’re doing to how easily that business is traded.

Everything is easier with Azure

AlphaPoint’s partnership with Microsoft is one of the secrets to their blockchain success. When AlphaPoint first started their business, they were using a small money-transfer platform, but they soon found that their business journey was growing rapidly and they needed a platform solution that could meet its needs.

AlphaPoint’s top technology needs:

• Global footprint
• Enterprise-ready
• Vetted security protocols

AlphaPoint found that Azure met all its immediate “musts,” and continues to grow as AlphaPoint’s customers’ needs and numbers grow. AlphaPoint really appreciates the enterprise approach that Microsoft uses, as several of their clients are global and are used to that approach. Once AlphaPoint partnered with Azure, they found quickly there were several benefits found in the Blockchain Workbench they could utilize right away:

• Asset digitization and custody
• Asset exchange and settlement: represent an asset in blockchain and build wealth
• Asset freedom: trade a gram of gold or cryptocurrencies

This “right away” utilization is a true AlphaPoint competitive advantage. Now, they are set up in Azure and have an implementation team that can establish a customer system within three months. AlphaPoint is proud to offer rapid deployment as a top benefit to its clients and also nods to Azure’s ease of use as its cause.

AlphaPoint’s implementation team sets up their customers, but there are two more teams that support their customers: the account management team and the support team. Every customer at AlphaPoint will have the same account management lead for the duration of their work with the company (at least five years). While there, they will also have full all-day customer support. Pendleton explains, “We give you the confidence that this will be up and running all the time.” And because Azure is a cloud-based platform, it has a global reach—meaning that no matter where AlphaPoint’s clients are on the globe, no matter the market in which they want to trade, Azure always has them covered.

What’s next for Azure and AlphaPoint?

Because the market is always changing, what’s traded on the blockchain exchange is always changing. For example, AlphaPoint (with Muirfield Investment Partners) has developed software that allows a token (Regulated Asset Backed Token [RABT]) to be traded freely while complying with securities laws. This token uses blockchain to introduce more liquidity into the real estate market. Here, we see AlphaPoint using a new form of market (ICO) to generate revenue to their existing systems. What isn’t new, however, is how AlphaPoint partners with Azure to continue to automate the exchange of this asset and to provide their customers with whatever they need.

As AlphaPoint continues to experience rapid growth, the company is excited about future opportunities to deepen their partnership with Microsoft, and to expand their customer reach and impact as they continue to discover innovative ways to leverage Azure.