IBM has announced that it has donated 44,000 lines of code to the Hyperledger Project, formerly called the Open Ledger Project, to help developers easily build secure distributed ledgers. More importantly, Big Blue is announcing a range of new products that aim to win new business from early blockchain adopters. IBM is trying to dominate this market before its potential customers wake up to the capabilities of blockchain tech. The first announcement is the addition of blockchain services on the IBM Cloud platform, which will allow customers to create and manage their own blockchain networks in combination with IBM’s plethora of business applications and tools, including its Bluemix app platform. The blockchain is derived from bitcoin, the distributed cryptocurrency that…