Microsoft's Coco Framework, the new Ethereum?
The CoCo demo seems decent. It'll probably even make public Ethereum obsolete.
The video shows CoCo framework @ 1600 tx/s vs ETH 24 tx/s among other things.
And while Ethereum's Plasma idea might go somewhere in the future, SME's are really the one's who'll benefit from using smart contracts. So if Microsoft and Intel are offering Blockchain As a Service (a simpler solution of a complex thing), why would the average SME need to interface with the public chain?
ETH -> Proof Of Stake, some people say December 2017-ish
Source code for Coco Framework, available early 2018-ish
When POS is live, the ETH Enterprise Alliance keeps the network afloat while developers continue to work on the open source code?
Got me with the last sentence. That's what I'm afraid of, as well. Decentralisation by the players, for the players.