Machine‐as‐a‐Service: Blockchain‐based management and maintenance of industrial appliances

Abstract Machine‐as‐a‐Service (MaaS) is an emerging service model for industrial appliances. With MaaS, machines are rented instead of being acquired, and their lifecycle is handled by an ecosystem of specialized actors, such as different independent maintenance companies certified for interventions on specific hardware. As the number of actors, clients, and providers involved in a MaaS ecosystem grows, maintaining mutual trust relationships between all involved parties and orchestrating MaaS operations in centralized fashion quickly becomes intractable. We present a blockchain‐based approach to providing MaaS in industrial settings where rented machines are equipped with IoT sensors, and where MaaS operations are orchestrated in a transparent, decentralized, and scalable way using a collection of smart contracts deployed over an infrastructure combining the Ethereum and InterPlanetary File System decentralized services. We detail the operations of MaaS, such as the lifecycle of management operations, and report on the performance of a prototype implementation deployed in the cloud.