May Member Spotlight: Chainyard
Chainyard is a team of Blockchain enthusiasts which form a dynamic organization with the expertise, process, and technology required to develop world-class business and software solutions.
We offer education, technical workshops, architecture assessments, business systems solution design, user interface design, continuous integration and delivery pipelines, operational impact assessments, network support services, consortium building, governance models and other activities that are critical to enabling a business to participate in a decentralized ecosystem.
When was your company/organization started?
Blockchain Consulting as part of IT People Corporation startedin Q4 2015. Chainyard was launched in June 2018.
How many locations does your company have? What is the NC presence like?
Chainyard has two locations. The primary location is located at IT People Corporation headquarters in Morrisville, NC. In Morrisville, we employ 50 people in Chainyard. The offshore facility is located in the IT People Corporation global development center in Hyderabad, India. Chainyard employs 10 team members in this location.
How many employees does your company have?
Chainyard has 60 fulltime team members globally.
What do you love most about doing business in NC?
We love doing business in North Carolina for multiple reasons starting with a great quality of life for our team members. The area offers tremendous opportunities academically, professionally and personally for our team and company to thrive.
If you could describe your corporate culture in just 3 words, what would you say?
Talented, Innovative, Integrity
Can you share some unique or fun facts about your company? What makes your business stand out?
The best way to describe our culture is that we demand a lot of passion, discipline and hard work from our consultants. But at the same time, we are very informal and give our team a lot of autonomy to get the job completed.
We have passionate and intellectual brainstorming discussions on various topics. Our teams go out quite often for lunches, happy hours, bowling, holiday parties and other team building events.
Above all, everyone has open door access to management; We encourage feedback from everyone in the organization to ensure inclusivity from all team members.
What kind of technology trends have affected your company, and how has your company dealt with those trends?
Technology trends have influenced the company direction and strategy. As an example, AR/VR, IOT and AI/ML have all been advancing at a rapid pace, though they were not in our original strategic plan. When we had opportunities in those areas, we were quick to invest in the right team members to deliver for our clients. This helped us not only deliver successfully but also demonstrate our ability to invest in these areas for our clients.
Blockchain is the most recent example where we picked up a new technology for our clients's needs and now have grown into a full focused team of 60 delivering solutions around the globe. We are also making larger investments by building our own libraries, tools, POCs and solutions leveraging Hyperledger Fabric.
What are the greatest obstacles and/or challenges that your business has faced? How have you and your business overcome them?
The biggest issue we face is a shortage of resources and talent in the local area to meet our growing business needs. We embarked on a two prong approach. First, we standardized our approach to deliver solutions by building our methodology, framework and accelerator tools. Second, we launched a comprehensive training program that takes experiences consultants from the basics to real world business use case development to become qualified experts in the new technology.
Are there any cool or interesting technologies you are working with currently?
The biggest issue we face is a shortage of resources and talent in the local area to meet our growing business needs. We have embarked on a two prong approach to meet this challenge. First, we have standardized our approach to deliver solutions by building a blockchain focused methodology, frameworks and tools to make delivery more efficient and cost effective for our clients. Second, we have launched a comprehensive training program that equips our consultants with the basics, real world business use case development and hands-on workshops to become qualified blockchain software engineers and consultants.
Has your business won any recent awards or other achievements you'd like to share?
Chainyard has been recognized by IBM as an Eco-System Partner. Our key projects around “Blockchain Enabled Asset Management” and “Blockchain Enabled Procurement of Contingent Labor” both for IBM have won various recognitions both internally and externally. The value of the work we have done in the Hyperledger space enabled us to present at various events such as IBM Interconnect, IBM Think and the Hyperledger Global Forum. In 2018, Chainyard, along with IBM and Consensys, topped Linkden 2018 Emerging Jobs Report in Blockchain technology.
What do you see for the future of your business?
We believe we are in the early stages with the technology. We see the interest grow year over year and expect to remain one of the best companies in the world to deliver blockchain consulting, engineering and operation services.
We are expanding our portfolio of blockchain offerings around supply chain, manufacturing and transportation to provide more solutions. We will continue to invest in other blockchain frameworks such as Indy, Burrow, Ethereum, and Corda to ensure we are delivering the best solution for the industry/problem being addressed.
We are also investing in developing our own blockchain based networks. We see Chainyard brand expanding into Consulting and Advisory Services around IoT, AR/VR and AI/ML to complement our blockchain solutions.
Is there anything on your website you want to highlight or any special events you want to promote?
The most interesting area of our website is our Events section. This section highlights many of the events we participate at demonstrating our investment to be a leader in blockchain technology.