Now is the time for tech companies to think proactively about their blockchain reactions. How will your business look and behave in a blockchain-enabled world?

Blockchain proponents say it will revolutionise many industries — again. You’ve seen it before: in smartphones, the cloud and digital disruption. In those revolutions, the tech industry itself was among the first disrupted.

What if blockchains remake work, life and play the way the compass changed seafaring. Or the way internal combustion engines changed transportation. Or even how penicillin changed medicine.

Blockchain is a relatively new addition to the portfolio of technologies. It will trigger chain reactions across business models, business processes, supply chains and customer relationships throughout the global economy. Like 3D printing, the sharing economy and IoT, blockchain promises to build the kind of critical mass that produces explosive disruption.

It is firing the imaginations of executives in the technology industry. Why? The technology records transactions in a way that enables it to automate trusted activity among digitally networked peers.

Should blockchain work as advertised, it could revolutionise many industries. Especially the ones that rely on trusted intermediaries or that now require strong central authorities. This mean replacing those institutions with algorithmically based trust among peers.

Tech companies must prepare to disrupt themselves — again. Blockchains could impact everything from cybersecurity to vertical software, massively distributed computing, the sharing economy and the internet of Things (IoT).

Early blockchain focus has centred on the financial services industry. This is partially in reaction to bitcoin (the cryptocurrency that is an application running on the first public blockchain).

Banks, traders, exchanges and regulators are involved in many pilot projects. They have launched multiple industry consortia to study blockchain’s use. The blockchain reaction has spread far and fast from there.

The blockchain reaction will pull in different industries at different times with differing levels of disruption. This brings both opportunity and risk.

The scope of a blockchain reaction, especially for tech companies, may require a sizeable pivot. Understanding that, along with tax, legal and policy implications, will take time and preparation.

There is also concern over anonymity. However, blockchains are not anonymous.

They associate all transactions with users identified by a blockchain address. As with an email address, anonymity is possible but only through separate actions to thwart traceability from the blockchain address to the account owner.

Tech companies need to start thinking now about what their products and services look like in a blockchain-enabled world. Else, they will not adapt quickly enough to remain competitive with those that do.

Perhaps most obvious is the disruptive threat to companies providing technologies to industries, like financial services, energy, health care or agriculture. Blockchain technology makes possible new business models and streamlined business processes.

If it works as expected, customers in every industry that tech companies serve will be assessing blockchain-based alternatives to their current information technology (IT) architectures to explore blockchain’s potential to provide strategic and competitive advantages.

Case in point: if blockchains really prove to reduce cost and increase trust in financial transactions, financial services firms may decide to migrate quickly to blockchain. Possibly away from their existing transaction processing technologies.

Software and services incumbents must be ready with blockchain-based platforms and solutions, or see the opportunity go to one of any number of well-funded blockchain start-ups.

— The writer is Telecommunications, Media and Technology Leader at EY Mena.