Acknowledgments

It was an inspiring effort to find the gap in the current blockchain books out there in the market, but it was a very challenging task to fill that gap with a truly pragmatic and business value perspective. However, with the collective wisdom and more than seven decades of technology and business leadership experience, a decade of blockchain technology expertise, and thousands of customer interactions among three of us, this expedition was absolutely rewarding and heartening.

Writing a book is a journey, and during this journey there are many people who directly or indirectly help you reach your destination. We are very fortunate and sincerely thankful to have such a supportive, encouraging, and tremendous tribe, consisting of our family members, colleagues, and editing and publishing team members who graciously helped us make this journey successful.

First of all, we sincerely thank the professional and awesome publishing team from Pearson—our executive editor Gregory Doench, a great partner and pleasure to work with who made the entire book writing process very smooth and timely for us; production editor Julie Nahil; copy editor Jill Hobbs; and project manager Rachel Paul.

Second, we are indebted to many of our colleagues who provided exceptional help throughout, including Steven Stansel from IBM marketing services (previously IBM Press), who walked us through with the overall book writing process, reviewed and refined the initial book proposal, and introduced us to the Pearson team; Wade Wallace from the IBM Redbook editing team, our first-gate editor who polished the language, caught grammar inaccuracies, and filled the messaging gaps before handing it over to the Pearson team; Colby Murphy from IBM Blockchain marketing, who helped us with marketing support and specially with the looking ahead and futures content; Tim Richer and Steven Mikolajczak from IBM Blockchain marketing, who provided overall process support to ensure content sanity and adherence to marketing and legal guidelines; Peter Reith from Jerry’s team, who helped him with book tasks, timing, and resources; Shaun Lynch from the IBM Blockchain design team, for the creative book cover design; and Steve Kim, also on the IBM Blockchain design team, for design consultation. Our special thanks to Marie Wieck, IBM General Manager, Blockchain, for her kind support, enabling us to work with Pearson on the book and also providing early book review and a review quote. And special thanks as well to Arvind Krishna, SVP Hybrid Cloud and Director of IBM Research, founding leader of IBM Blockchain technology, for his invaluable guidance and leadership in this space and his early book review and review quote.

Finally, we are very grateful to the following people: Don Tapscott, thought leader, author of Blockchain Revolution, who provided an unbiased review of the manuscript and graciously wrote the Foreword; Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger, technology leader and research affiliate at MIT, columnist at WSJ CIO Journal, and VP Emeritus, IBM, who candidly reviewed the manuscript and provided a sincere and awesome quote. To Dr. Keith Pigues, CEO and Founder of Luminas Strategy and coauthor of Winning with Customers—a Playbook for B2B, who provided instrumental and constructive guidance on simplifying the content and focusing on delivering value for the audience, reviewing the manuscript, and writing a review quote. To Perianne Boring, Founder and President of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, who is a driving force behind promoting the acceptance of blockchain technology through education and advocacy and working closely with governments, private organizations, policymakers, regulatory agencies, and industry—she is a great friend and leader from global blockchain community who helped us with manuscript review and provided a review quote in a timely manner.

Most importantly, Jai would like to thank, from the bottom his heart, his awesome wife, Varshal. She is a true inspiration and sparked his thoughts and encouraged him to write the book. While working herself full-time as senior program manager for information privacy and security at Cisco Systems, she did double duty for several months taking care of everything at home: their two young children’s school, club, and sports activities many evenings, and over weekends by herself for all the piano, dance, taekwondo, and painting classes, and soccer, basketball, and volleyball practices and games. Thank you so much, darling. Jai would like to extend his thanks to his daughter, Saachi, and his son, Yogya, for their understanding and for allowing Daddy to spend ample time to write this book, missing many great moments of their activities. Also, Jai is eternally grateful to his mother, Saroopi Devi; father, Phusiya Ram; and mother-in-law, Chitra Mayekar, who have been calling him from India every other day during this period, asking about his well-being and showering their blessings on him. Jai and Varshal’s siblings from India—Suchita, Ramesh, Amey, Vijay, Sunita, Anita, and Vinita—have been a great support and motivational backbone.

Beside Jai’s family, of course, this would not have been possible without his coauthors. He truly enjoyed this memorable book-writing experience shared with them and sincerely thanks Jerry for his extraordinary leadership and technology vision. He thanks Nitin for bringing unique insights and true balance from his hundreds of client interactions to the critical topics of the book. Finally, he appreciates and thanks his management team, including Bruce Hawks, Venkat Raghavan, and Sanjay Tripathy, for their direct and indirect motivation and support.

In the spirit of Jerry famously saying, “Blockchain is a team sport,” Jerry would like to acknowledge Team Cuomo: starting with his lovely wife, Stephanie; his dad and mom, Jerome/Pop and Rita/Reetz; his daughter and son-in-law, Rose/Robo and Christophe B.; his son, Gennaro/Bud; his sisters, Stephanie/Ses and Andrea/Agia; and his many wonderful in-laws, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins. Each person has helped shaped Jerry’s smile. He thanks the Mind the Gap band (Aydo, Barry, Marc, and Lin) for putting up with practices he missed.

And “Blockchain Jerry” would not be that without his workmates. He knows that by only naming a few, he will get in trouble for leaving people off the list, but he has to, at least, thank the current leadership team of the “IBM chain gang” that supported him in getting blocks on the ledger: Arvind K., Marie W., Bridget Van K., Ramesh G., Brigid M., James W., John McLean, Gari S., Krishna R., Chris F., Sharon C., Anthony O., Kathryn H., Mark P., Peter R., Andy C., Bobbie C., Meeta, Mihir S., David H., Gale F., Steve K., Tim R., Alan D., Alan B., Adam G., Dan G., Eileen L., Rob S., Rachel J., and Michael B. . . . and John W. Jerry has special thanks for Colby Murphy for helping guide his pen in the right direction. Last but not least, Jerry thanks his coauthors, Jai and Nitin, for ensuring that when Jerry agreed to help write this book, it was treated as a transaction on the blockchain that once committed could not be undone. This team has defined Jerry and made him who he is today—and he is so thankful for that.

Nitin would like to acknowledge his wife, Ritu, for her support and for handling things on the home front and taking care of their son, Neil. While jobs and related travel can be extremely demanding on everyone’s time, writing a book adds to the ordeal. It is at such times that a nudge and encouragement can do wonders for energy levels, so he thanks both Ritu and Neil for supporting him through this journey.

Also, he would to thank his coauthors: Jerry for his mentorship, leadership, and support, and Jai for shepherding him through the process and making sure every single detail was covered. He also thanks Tim Richer from IBM Marketing for his support, Wade Wallace for an early draft edit, and Jill from the Pearson team for timely edits and responses. Special thanks to Greg Doench from Pearson for his guidance on the publication process.