Business software and cloud services company SAP has joined Hyperledger, a collaborative cross-industry effort created to advance blockchain technology.

The company plans to utilize blockchain in existing and new business scenarios for enterprises, and will implement blockchain across its portfolio, including the SAP Ariba network to enable various use cases. Examples include provenance scenarios, digital object representations or collaborative transaction execution.

“We believe blockchain is a transformative technology for enterprise businesses. We are committed to advancing its adoption via the creation of new standards, use cases, platforms and open applications,” said Juergen Mueller, Chief Innovation Officer, SAP. “In joining Hyperledger, we plan to share our expertise and knowledge to help bring open distributed ledger technology to all businesses.”

Hyperledger aims to create common distributed ledger technology that enables organizations to build and run robust, industry-specific applications, platforms and hardware systems to support their individual business transactions.

The project has grown to more than 122 members since its inception, spanning various industries including finance, healthcare, the Internet of Things, credit card services and aeronautics, among several others.

“Having support from an enterprise software and cloud leader like SAP is an important step in the right direction,” said Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director, Hyperledger. “The diversity of our members is a real strength, as we look to advance open blockchain technology POCs, pilots and production deployments across many industries this year.”