We would like to thank our readers in taking time to consume our collective body of work that is representative of our practice, experience, and knowledge gained along the way. This book was motivated by the desire that we and others have had to contribute to the evolution of blockchain technologies. We were also challenged by a lack of a comprehensive guide that addresses myriad considerations, including but not limited to technology design choices, architecture choice, business consideration, and governance models. The authors of this book represent a unique and diverse set of skills, which should be evident in addressing the depth of the content with ease and simplicity. We have collectively focused on organization and flow to ensure not only an easy-to-follow and natural flow but also topical modularity.
The contents of this book are aimed to address a diverse audience, from business leaders to blockchain developers and anyone who would like to learn from practitioners' experience expressed in this book. We believe that not only will the audience enjoy and benefit personally and professionally from the book, but also this book will be used as reference material, a handbook of sorts, and aid in making informed design decisions. We encountered various challenges while writing this book, including our own demanding schedule, but ensured that we deliver up-to date information at the time of release of this content. Blockchain technology landscape is in flux and keeping up with evolution and innovation is a challenge. We have attempted to distill a model that will benefit the reader to create a framework to methodically consume blockchain-related update and build upon the foundation laid out in this book. We have also expended a lot of energy in addressing business design and resulting technology design choices, because unlike other pure technology platforms Blockchain (powered business network), is a very business-specific and technology-centric discipline. We hope the findings and documented considerations from practitioners will arm business leaders and technology managers in making informed decisions and minimizing the failures experienced by the authors.
The technical content covered in this book, aims to provide a solid foundation to a diverse set of skills, including IT professionals, blockchain novices, and advanced blockchain developers. Modeled after a real-world use case, the application development story weaves in various steps from infrastructure creation to Dev-Ops models and model-driven development, covering various enterprise technology management challenges with a focus on the blockchain network-centric impact of application deployment. We have provided a framework for security and performance design, which we hope the technical audience find particularly helpful and establish a solid foundation as a technology design consideration.
We'll conclude the book with a pragmatic view of various challenges and related opportunities, and call for the community of readers to rise up to the challenges  and reap the rewards of the resulting opportunities. While this book focuses on and targets Hyperledger projects, we expect the core topics covered in this book to be universally applicable to the blockchain technology discipline. We sincerely hope that our effort in time and acumen is well received by our readers and arm them with a strong foundation to make impactful contributions to progressing the blockchain innovation agenda.
