Microsoft has a new crypto partner: Ankr

Important crypto news for Ankr, which forges a strategic partnership with Microsoft to provide infrastructure for dedicated nodes. The good news comes after the announcement a few weeks ago of the partnership between AWS and Avalanche.

We recall that Ankr (ANKR) is an Ethereum token that powers Ankr, a Web3 infrastructure. It is also a DeFi platform for staking on different blockchains, making it easier and more accessible for anyone who wants to participate in blockchain ecosystems by developing dApps, managing nodes or staking.

Ankr and Microsoft: the impact on crypto ANKR

News of the collaboration between Ankr and Microsoft immediately sent ANKR’s price soaring, within an otherwise very modest day for the entire altcoin sector.

Over which there are the concerns emanating from the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in particular, as well as new winds of monetary tightening from the world’s major central banks.

In any case, the collaboration with Microsoft is definitely important for ANKR. Indeed, according to what has been reported by The Block, the crypto project has entered into a partnership with the US IT giant Microsoft in order to offer node hosting services to enterprise customers.

According to what was reported by the American news outlet, the two companies will work together in order to offer these types of services by relying on Microsoft Azure‘s cloud infrastructure, with specific products that will be tailored precisely to the needs of those who need to run nodes.

As anticipated, given the relevance of Ankr’s partner, the news obviously triggered a token rush. Rashmi Misra, general manager of the AI and Emerging Technologies division at Microsoft, commented:

“Our partnership with Ankr will enable developers and organizations to access data on blockchain in a reliable and secure way, while exploring how Web3 can solve real-world business problems. Together we are building a robust infrastructure layer for Web3.”

Comments regarding the collaboration between Ankr and Microsoft

As anticipated, Microsoft’s partnership with decentralized blockchain infrastructure provider Ankr was made to provide a new node hosting service on Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

In addition, the partnership will see an integration of both companies’ technology, combining Ankr’s blockchain infrastructure with Microsoft’s cloud solutions.

According to Ankr, the enterprise node distribution service will offer low-latency blockchain connections for Web3 projects so that developers can instead spend their time scaling their applications. The service forwards transactions, distributes smart contracts and can read or write blockchain data.

By upgrading its load balancing system to use Azure-based routing solutions, Ankr said the company would be able to further scale its transaction processes by efficiently routing remote procedure call requests to the most suitable nodes.

With technology integration, customers will be able to manage node hosting solutions with the choice of custom specifications for memory, bandwidth and global location for blockchain nodes.

Chandler Song, co-founder and CEO of Ankr, commented on the development:

“The partnership, while an incredible milestone for Ankr, is also a key indicator of how well the decentralized web has come to integrate with crucial players at every layer of web systems. The end result will be an extremely prolific building era for blockchain-based applications from new Web3 projects and large enterprises entering the space.”

Microsoft and banning crypto mining on cloud services

Cloud computing giant Microsoft recently took steps to increase the stability of its cloud services by imposing new restrictions on activities such as cryptocurrency mining.

Hence, Microsoft has banned cryptocurrency mining from its online services to better protect its customers and its clouds, according to British technology news agency The Register on 15 December.

The company introduced the new restrictions as part of the universal licensing terms of Microsoft Online Services. Microsoft updated its Acceptable Use Policy on 1 December to clarify that cryptocurrency mining is prohibited without Microsoft’s prior approval.

In the “Acceptable Use Policy” section, Microsoft said it now requires users to obtain written pre-approval from the company to use any of the Microsoft Online Services for cryptocurrency mining.

Microsoft reportedly said its latest restrictions on cryptocurrency mining aim to protect online services from risks such as cyber fraud, attacks and unauthorized access to customer resources, stating:

“We made this change to further protect our customers and mitigate the risk of disruption or compromise of services in the Microsoft cloud.”

The company also reportedly noted that it may consider authorizing the mining of cryptocurrencies for testing and research purposes for security detections.

Microsoft Online Services is Microsoft’s hosted software offering and is a component of the company’s software as a service strategy. These services include Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing network, which is known to offer cryptocurrency mining on certain subscription types.

As reported earlier, Microsoft also experimented with blockchain services on Azure, but quietly shut down its Azure Blockchain Service project in September 2021.

According to some reports, Microsoft’s cloud computing systems have suffered significant capacity shortfalls in recent years due to ongoing supply chain constraints. More than half a dozen Azure data centers will reportedly remain constrained until early 2023.