In the blockchain space the announcements come fast and furious The movement to bring all sorts of data and processes to the decentralized ledger model and to blockchain platforms is an inexorable one At the same time that press releases seem to accrue on a daily basis earnings calls offer a bit of a progress report where company management gives investors analysts and observers of various industries a bit of insight into how certain initiatives are faring and how they are contributing to top and bottom lines or not International Business Machines the tech giant known a bit more colloquially as IBM has been among the firms investing both money and mindpower into blockchain evidenced by a string of announcements across the last several months and as evidenced too in a drive to file scores of blockchain-related patents As noted late last month via the website blocklrcom some of the biggest companies in tech and beyond have been scrambling to patent IP tied to blockchain Though most of the patents have come from China as also detailed in PYMNTS IBM is in fact tied with Mastercard for the second highest tally of blockchain patents in 2017 The company has said that its blockchain platform has more than 400 clients using Hyperledger Composer and Hyperledger Fabric Among recent announcements the company had a patent accepted for using blockchain for database management And in terms of partnerships IBM said that it has worked with the shipping firm Maersk to help streamline international logistics The collaboration known as TradeLens uses smart contracts to handle bills of lading and other documentation The companies said last week that the platform has handled 154 million shipping events Before that announcement IBM said it is working with Walmart to improve the latters food business supply chain And this week came the news that Visa is integrating open source blockchain code via Hyperledger Fabric with a 2019 anticipated launch of Visas B2B Connect the enterprise blockchain offering focused on cross-border payments The Earnings Commentary With the slew of headlines in place earnings reported by IBM also offered a bit of a prism through which to view blockchain The verdict seems to be Its a work in progress In terms of the headline numbers IBM said that its cognitive computing segment which brings a number of initiatives under one umbrella ranging from artificial intelligence to blockchain to transaction processing technologies was down 5 percent year over year to 41 billion The cognitive solutions business is comprised of two segments solutions software and transaction processing software The former business is what includes AI and blockchain while the latter includes software that is tied to hardware and reflects what you might consider to be traditional computing initiatives Transaction processing was down 8 percent year on year and management noted on the call that solutions software was down 3 percent as secular shifts in collaboration and commerce and talent management have impacted results Yet CFO Jim Kavanaugh pointed to AI and stated that modernizing those aforementioned offerings to combat those secular changes is underway and growth is seen in both AI and blockchain On the call Kavanaugh said that OPEX control where expenses were down 4 percent year on year allowed the company to make investments in a number of initiatives among them blockchain In general said Kavanaugh we had good performance across these areas this past quarter He noted that in the emerging area of blockchain this quarter our IBM Food Trust network for food safety went live and Carrefour one of the worlds leading retailers joined the network We also jointly announced TradeLens with Maersk Together we will apply blockchain technologies to address inefficiencies in the global supply chain and signed up over 50 ecosystem participants and we now have over 75 active blockchain networks Later Kavanaugh said weve got engagements in over 500 clients around global trade universal payments around trade finance around food safety etc So we see that part of the portfolio continue to improve When you bring it all together we expect with a strong pipeline that we would return IBM software back to an expectation of modest growth in the fourth quarter he told analysts And well see as we get through fourth quarter how that momentum will continue in 2019