Context Labs
Bringing Context to Connections

Blockchain has brought forth a technological revolution with its capability to ensure trust and transparency in all things transactional. Take, for example, the heavily fragmented music industry wherein today, information gaps that exist across production to distribution, is draining out not only revenue but also due recognition to the back-end talents. The mediatory deliverers such as streaming services and resellers take the bigger slice of the revenue cake. Here, blockchain promises to turn the tables for the music industry; wherein, the information is stored in a decentralized, incorruptible database which means nobody owns the information, but it is accessible to all. Such ability offers transparency into every transaction that took place in the product lifecycle, enabling due attributions for delivering of just rewards. “Irrespective of the industry vertical, starting at the inception of an idea and its intellectual property and all the way through until delivery of the completed product, Blockchain can build ‘confidence and trust, into the supply chain of everything,” says Dan Harple, Founder and CEO at Context Labs. Harple, the visionary entrepreneur, investor and inventor known for his contribution to the creation of several internet standards such as Real Time Streaming Protocol, VoIP, and core technology for Oracle Fusion and Sina Weibo, aims to do just that.

Dan shares his unique insights with CIO Applications about his innovation behind two leading blockchain-enabled companies, Context Labs™ (www.contextlabs.com) and Spherical|Analytics™ (sphericalanalytics.io).

Please give us a brief overview of your company

Everything we share and use is part of a supply chain—digital and physical. We are all interconnected in a supply chain of relationships, ideas, intellectual property, invention, products, and services. This supply chain has innate value, and in today's digitally interconnected world, must be protected and secured. Today's Internet has disconnected and obfuscated the relationship between producers and consumers. Our technology builds a trusted and transparent bridge back to direct peer-to-peer supply chains, enhancing the value chain for all, shining a light on the interconnections that exist.

Our primary offering is the Immutably™ software solution to provide the most immutable truth possible for our customers regardless of use case. We don’t concern ourselves with cryptocurrency, tokenization, or some of the trends that exist in blockchain today. In some ways, we feel that the emphasis on ICOs and fundraising around concept white papers is antithetical to what we do, and also, does a disservice to the potential of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies.

Could you throw some more light on how your offerings are essentially in tune with specific industry ecosystems

Our methodology is one that incorporates five distinct layers in our software stack. First, we begin by virtually ingesting all relevant data associated with that customer’s use case and begin preprocessing the data. Following that, we proof the data using a branded product called ProofWorks™. This serves as one of our key differentiators that mathematically attest to the source identity, data itself, and any associated algorithms and trusted partners. Then, the data is ledgered on either our own blockchain ledger, Scrivener™or integrated onto another ledger using our open API system. Then, we layer in cutting- edge network graph analytics to provide both descriptive and predictive insights for that customer's use case. Finally, we provide any visualization, manipulation, dashboarding, or other presentation to serve the information to the customer and provide them with the highest quality, most immutable, and attestable information about their use case, with our Impact Analytics™ components.

Our solutions can be deployed in the cloud, as a VM, or inside the premise as an appliance. At the premise, we have also deployed on a 1U server with a bundled offering called LedgerBlade™. All of these instances allow a large complicated enterprise to selectively choose the targets for deployment, and empower CIOs to deploy our technology in ways they have told us to make sense for their firms.

Could you cite one or two case studies on how you have enabled clients to overcome hurdles and attain desired outcomes with your innovative array of solutions?

A great customer example is RR Donnelly, one of the largest book printer firms globally, and their spin-off company Lakeside Communications. Piracy, velocity, loss, damage, and other revenue reducing problems plagued the book publishing supply chain. We implemented and integrated our Immutably™ solution for them in their book publication supply chain, enabling them to reduce fraud and save their customers money. We effectively made a physical/analog book "digital," by giving every book its own cryptographic identity, its "digital twin," allowing it to be tracked from printing to distribution, and on into a consumer's hands.

We have the ability to not only transform physical/analog products with digital representations, but we also do it with data. An excellent example for this in a customer-enablement scenario was the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). Using Immutably™ and Impact Analytics™, EDF was able to model every existing wellhead in the state of Pennsylvania, the reported emissions that came from them, while also layering in publicly available population health data to begin to describe the correlation be-tween emissions and health. Our analytics and modeling, rooted in their existing models, helped to highlight the massive differ¬ence between the emissions reported by the industry operators and the actual emissions from each wellhead while predicting the emissions level in several different proposed policy implementa¬tions. This important environmental data has now been secured at its source by using Immutably™, and Proofworks™ is ensuring the veracity of the data throughout its life and utility.

In addition to OMI, you’ve also spurred the conception of a couple of notable public initiative solely on the concerned industry’s imperative need for supply chain integration. Could you elaborate more on the same?

We co-founded the Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative (MOBI, www.dlt.mobi) with critical leaders and major companies in the automotive industry to bring blockchain solutions into vehicles for a more resilient, cleaner future for transportation. Lots of many great announcements are coming in the future not just for Context Labs and Spherical|Analytics, but also for our industry partners at the OMI and MOBI.