Tata's IT Arm Says Its New Toolkit Will Enable Faster Blockchain App Development

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has launched a new blockchain developers' kit that it claims will make developing apps up to 40 percent faster.

TCS, the information technology subsidiary of Tata Group and India's largest company by market cap, said Monday that its Quartz DevKit is now generally available as an "intuitive, low code development kit for enterprises to quickly build and deploy blockchain applications on any popular blockchain platform."

Designed to remove some of the complexity of building with blockchain, the toolbox allows devs to create apps on major blockchain platforms such as ethereum, Hyperledger Fabric or R3 Corda, according to a press release.

"We developed the Quartz DevKit to help [clients'] teams rapidly put together high-quality pilots using smart contracts on any platform with reduced coding effort. We have received very positive feedback from our pilot customers, and are pleased to make the DevKit available for use at scale,” said R Vivekanand, global head of Quartz at TCS.

As with more consumer-driven software products, developers are offered a choice of templates for their projects that can then be tailored with code extensions specific to their chosen blockchain. DevKit also offers a web-based development environment, and plug-and-play components across areas such as security authentication and user management, cutting down on the time it takes to build smart contracts, TCS says.

The product further has a built-in tool to scrutinize developers' smart contracts and help keep coding at "best in class" standards.

The DevKit comes as part of TCS' Quartz suite of products aimed to facilitate the development of blockchain products and integrations for enterprises, including a set of business solutions for a range of industries, a means of integrating existing solutions with blockchain platforms and a central hub for admin and monitoring.

For some time, TCS has been working on a wide range of blockchain projects in-house, and has joined a number of collaborative efforts around the tech.

As far back as 2016, the firm claimed to be involved in “more than 100” blockchain prototypes as it eyed use cases across finance. More recently, TCS said in April that it had completed a trial using blockchain to facilitate cross-border securities settlement between two central securities depositories.