Nasdaq already has strategies and templates in place for blockchain technologies – but the company is enlisting Microsoft to help take it to the next level.

The two companies are coming together to put Nasdaq’s Financial Framework (NFF), which powers a ‘vast’ portfolio of business apps and services across the trading lifecycle, onto the Microsoft Azure blockchain “to build a ledger-agnostic blockchain capability that supports a multi-ledger strategy”, in the words of the companies.

“Our capital markets industry is evolving faster than ever with the advent and advancement of cloud, blockchain, machine intelligence and others,” said Magnus Haglind, senior vice president and head of product management for Nasdaq’s market technology business. “Key players in the industry are looking to these technologies to explore how they can become more effective and efficient, but also gain competitive advantage.”

In theory, combining the two companies’ capabilities will allow capital market firms to use any NFF-based applications which incorporate blockchain technologies without any need for prior skills and knowledge. “As more industries move towards capital markets technology and structures, we see the potential for blockchain to provide value in secure, frictionless and instantaneous matching of buyers and sellers,” added Tom Fay, Nasdaq senior vice president of enterprise architecture.

Nasdaq’s interest in blockchain has been comparatively long-held. The company filed a patent for a computer system for the secure release of time-sensitive information using blockchain at the start of 2017, as this publication reported, having previously submitted documentation around storing exchange transaction records.

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