Microsoft and EY Announce New Blockchain Solution to Manage Royalty Payments

Microsoft and EY (a UK-based auditing firm) have just announced the launch of a new solution for managing royalties and content rights. The peculiarity of this solution is that it is based on the Quorum blockchain technology and the Microsoft Azure cloud.
To understand the usefulness of this new solution, you should know that each month, intellectual property generates millions of transactions that must be paid in the form of royalties to content creators such as developers, artists, production houses and well other actors.
In order to calculate the royalties and other fees due to these third parties, the bodies responsible for collecting these funds must do so manually and generally from offline data sources, which adds a layer of slowness and risks of errors in data processing. To get an idea of ​​things, you should know that the current process of transaction analysis can go up to 45 days or more to aggregate the data and produce the reports of some players in the field of video game editing.

Also, to reduce these delays and provide better visibility in the processing of these transactions, Microsoft and EY have worked together and announced in recent days the release of this new solution for managing royalties and other content rights. In the words of the publishers of this solution, it would be "designed to increase trust and transparency among industry players, significantly reduce operational inefficiencies in the fee and royalty management process, and eliminate the need for costly and costly manual reconciliation. partner reviews ".
It would therefore have the advantage of "providing blockchain participants with near real-time visibility into sales transactions and helping participants to react more quickly and effectively to market needs, as they will get more information. about the content purchased, "says the two companies.
To achieve these goals, Microsoft and EY have designed their solution on the JP Morgan Quorum Block Chain Intelligent Contract Architecture and the Microsoft Azure Cloud Block Chain and Infrastructure Technologies. It should allow "a precise and real-time calculation of the royalty position of each participant, providing better visibility for the registration and reconciliation of royalty transactions," add the editors.
As a first step, Microsoft and EY have decided to have their solution tested by a limited number of video game partners who will be interested. Ubisoft, the French publisher of video games has already embarked on this new adventure and says through the voice of its Senior Vice President, Loic Amans, that the use of the blockchain in the field of contracts and digital royalties is really exciting.
When fully operational, this blockchain network is expected to span thousands of players and handle millions of transactions a day, the two companies said. According to Microsoft and EY, this feature makes this network one of the largest business blockchain ecosystems in the world.
For HFS Strategy Director Saurabh Gupta, "This solution, developed jointly by EY and Microsoft, represents a breakthrough for the adoption of the enterprise blockchain, which is starting to come out of the labs to enter the real world. EY's expertise in block chain engagement and investment in end-to-end services [...] makes him an excellent collaborator with Microsoft. Together, these organizations are developing a unique capability that uses the blockchain - to address and resolve the complexities of calculating content, tracking and payment fees - with the potential to revolutionize the digital rights management process. " .