American company Seagate, one of the largest hard drive manufacturers, in cooperation with IBM will create solutions based on the blockchain to combat the supply of counterfeit hard drives. It is reported by CoinDesk.
On Tuesday, November 6, the company said that Seagate will be registered on the blockchain platform IBM to prevent the use of counterfeit products in the data centre-IBM, and in the future — to combat the proliferation of counterfeit goods among end users.
Bruce Anderson, global managing Director, IBM Electronics Industry, said that Seagate for several years is a reliable supplier of hard drives for IBM server cents. The partnership aims to track through the blockchain each hard drive throughout the supply chain from the moment of production. He says:
If you look at the passage of the disk through the supply chain to its installation on the server, you will find a lot of hands through which it passes, and after starting the servers there are quite a few people who have access to the equipment. So the question arises: “We are working with the real equipment or is it a substitution?”
To authenticate Seagate will bear the electronic key that is stored on the blockchain platform IBM and can be checked at any time.
Andersen also noted that, in addition to monitoring Seagate drives, a blockchain platform as a whole will help to improve the supply chain processes and optimize or eliminate unnecessary paperwork. He says that this platform will be taken “very quickly”, given the current extent of the problem of counterfeit goods. In a study conducted by the International coalition in the fight against counterfeiting, it is argued that the global value of counterfeit or pirated goods in 2015 amounted to more than $1.7 trillion. According to him, IBM has turned to other producers who may be interested in using the blockchain to track its products.
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