Amazon Web Services (AWS) follows the likes of Oracle, IBM and Huawei with a "blockchain-as-a-service"-- Blockchain Templates, a means for customers to quickly build secure blockchain networks on the cloud.
The company itself admits there is a lot of confusion surrounding the idea of the blockchain. In fact, the blog post detailing Blockchain Templates compares current discussion of the technology to "Shimmer Floor Wax," a "Saturday Night Live" sketch about a floor polish that is also a dessert topping. AWS describes the blockchain as having "lots of intriguing possibilities," be it as as "the foundation of a new monetary system" or as "a distributed ledger and immutable data source" one can apply to multiple use cases.
Whatever one wants to use the blockchain-- and cryptocurrency-- for, Blockchain Templates is a means to deploy Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric frameworks using AWS CloudFormation templates. The blockchain network resides in an own Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), allowing one to access their VPC subnets and network Access Control Lists. Users also get granular permissions to restrict the resources an Amazon ECS cluster or EC2 instance can access.
So far Amazon does not charge extra for Blockchain Templates, and customers only need to pay for the AWS resources running the blockchain network. The service is available in all public AWS regions.
Go Introducing AWS Blockchain Templates for Ethereum and Hyperledge Fabric
