Microsoft has become the latest and almost certainly the biggest company so far to lend its support to Blockchain technology, with the launch of its new Ethereum Blockchain-as-a-Service on Azure.

Microsoft says the new offering is targeted at customers from the financial services industry. The service was developed in a partnership with a startup called ConsenSys (Consensus Systems, Inc.), a venture production studio that builds decentralized applications and developer tools for Blockchain ecosystems. That partnership was first announced last month, and the two companies have wasted no time in getting their offerings out the door.

Blockchain technology, which was made famous by Bitcoin, works as a kind of decentralized ledger that has to be verified and shared by a massive, global computer network and is therefore tamper-proof. The technology has attracted huge interest in the financial services industry, which believes it can help to both improve efficiency and reduce costs.

The best thing about the Blockchain is it can be used to secure and validate the exchange of all types of data – not just Bitcoins. It’s also possible to add new features to the Blockchain, and a Swiss company called Ethereum GmbH has done just that, building its own fully programmable Ethereum Blockchain to support the Ether cryptocurrency. According to SiliconANGLE‘s Duncan Riley, the main difference between Ether and Bitcoin is that the former offers greater flexibility of use within a given enterprise application.

Microsoft’s Ethereum Blockchain-as-a-Service offering delivers two separate tools that allow customers to rapidly develop and deploy SmartContract-based applications – Ether.Camp, which is an integrated developer environment; and BlockApps, a toolkit for building Ethereum applications.

“Working with our customers that wanted to start playing around with Blockchain technology, the major pain point that we kept hearing from them was that it was just too hard to get started, and too expensive,” Microsoft’s director of tech strategy for financial services, Marley Gray, told Reuters.

That difficulty is what prompted Microsoft to offer its own Ethereum Blockchain service, so companies can start using the technology without needing to make any significant investment in hardware, Gray added.

Microsoft’s validation of the Ethereum Blockchain is perhaps the strongest indication yet of how seriously the financial services industry views the technology. It follows an announcement by Nasdaq OMX Group Inc that it’s partnering with a startup called Chain to test the Blockchain as a mechanism for trading shares in private companies.

In recent months, major banks including Barclays, BBVA, Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), Credit Suisse, J.P. Morgan, State Street, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS have also announced their own plans to develop a framework for using the Blockchain technology in the financial industry.