Master's Thesis : Blockchain within software licensing

Abstract

With the rise of blockchain, its possibilities and different applications, the EERM practice within the professional services firm Deloitte wants to investigate its capabilities in both the SLC (Software License Compliance) and SAM (Software Assets Management) offerings. The first part of this master thesis consisted in investigating SLC and SAM processes to identify the business needs. Both processes could be time-consuming because data related to software assets and licenses are often incomplete and sometimes inaccurate. To address these pain points, Deloitte wants a solution that leverages blockchain technology. A lot of companies want to investigate this new technology in the scope of their business. However, just a few consider alternative options that could be more suitable for simple use cases. This is why a literature study of several types of distributed technology - distributed databases, distributed file systems, blockchains - has been conducted in the second part of the master thesis.

As a result, one notices that multiple frameworks can be incorporated in the use case of software licensing. The advantage of the blockchain technology compared to the other ones is the tamper-resistance and immutable properties directly resulting from the hash chain of blocks that cannot be modified without every participant noticing. In addition, blockchain frameworks allow for representing the business with high accuracy by integrating identity management services, data privacy enhancement mechanisms, and fine-grained representation of organizations and their interactions - using smart contracts. In this perspective, permissioned blockchain frameworks are suitable for our use case. Compared to Corda and Quorum, Hyperledger Fabric is the most complete framework.

In the third part of the master thesis, a proof of concept (POC) has been implemented. It aims to demonstrate the feasibility of the solution and its added value compared to the current system. In this work, the blockchain infrastructure is based on Hyperledger Fabric. The network participants, assets, and transactions are defined by Hyperledger Composer. Clients' applications, in the form of web interfaces, do not communicate directly with the blockchain but send requests to a gateway server. The latter, implemented in Flask, handles clients' authentication and submits transactions and queries in the right format to Hyperledger Fabric. In this POC, clients (either software vendors, or customers) can monitor the flow of software assets and licenses throughout their life cycle (create, sell, buy, deploy, change installation, decommission). Deloitte, endorsing the role of solution manager, is granted read access to assets and participants transiting and interacting over the blockchain. Therefore, the professional services firm would be able to conduct SLC and SAM processes without any delays induced by the lack of completeness and accuracy of the information.