What is IoT?

Nowadays, the Internet of Things (IoT) is a buzzword seemingly appearing everywhere. In a nutshell, IoT is the extension of Internet connectivity into physical devices and everyday objects. Your objects used to be a simple device serving only its primary purposes; now these objects can become “smart” by sensing, calculating and transferring data over the Internet. Depending on the data, they can even perform actions without any human interventions.

From your first search about IoT on the web, some popular IoT applications like Tesla’s cars, Amazon Echo, Google Home might make you think that IoT is all about smart consumer devices. IoT benefits in the industrial sector which are also striking. It’s transforming industries from manufacturing with automated machines to the public sector with smart public transport or waste management.

For example, in a manufacturing factory, factors including heat, light, humidity, air quality, and so on, are crucial and need to be controlled at certain levels. Traditionally, a factory may have different devices and sensors to complete this task. However, these devices often depend on the local network setup. Connectivity and compatibility do not optimize. Moreover, data from these kinds of sensors might not be processed and transformed into usable information.

IoT and Cloud Computing

So for businesses thinking about IoT, where does a Cloud Service Provider like Microsoft Azure stand for them?

As IoT is about connectivity and data, one of the foremost things to consider is computing power and data storage. Handling these requirements may incur significant upfront infrastructure costs. Building a complete solution from scratch is complicated and costly.

Then cloud platforms like Azure, Amazon, and Google come into the picture. These giants provide services that help businesses build their IoT solutions better and faster. Connecting devices, controlling them, and transforming their raw data into valuable information is complex. This task might require a huge investment in IT human resources and infrastructure, which is a barrier to entry for businesses wanting to step up their technology adoption. Cloud pioneers like Microsoft help to eliminate many of these barriers by offering enterprise-ready solutions.

Azure IoT Overview

The Internet of Things (IoT) - Azure is a collection of Microsoft-managed cloud services that connect, monitor, and control billions of IoT assets.

Benefits
Microsoft Azure: Azure can be considered an advantage since its innovation and service quality are growing fast, catching up with Amazon Web Services (AWS). The cloud provides undeniable benefits in infrastructure, resources, availability in regions across the globe, and high-quality support services.

Usage of Azure is growing every day with its increasing support from IoT cloud services via satellite to its leading technology.

Going into more details of IoT services, Azure offers multiple options for different purposes.

A wide range of services

The above picture gives an overview of what Azure can offer. It’s a full pack ranging from IoT-specific services, for example, Azure Central, Hub, and Edge, to other services of Data Analysis, Machine Learning, and Integration.

Far from the era of isolated Microsoft technology, nowadays, Microsoft, and especially Azure, offers a substantial range of services supporting both Microsoft and third-party technologies. Azure services integrate with existing enterprise solutions, from Microsoft Dynamics to other systems such as Salesforce, SAP, and Oracle.

Let’s go through an overview of core functionalities:

Device management: Devices connect securely and are remotely controlled to collect and analyze real-time device data, providing insights to trigger automatic actions to speed up business processes.

Authentication and Authorization:

Follow standard protocols and security requirements. Especially, Microsoft with its growing strength in enterprise applications, many businesses are already using Azure Active Directory, which makes the whole Authentication and Authorization process easy and smooth.

Communication Channel:

Supports many protocols including HTTPS, MQTT, AMQP but does not support HTTP to ensure security.

SDK and Programming Languages:

Support for multiple languages, for example, C#, Python, Java, Node.js.

Device Communication:

Azure IoT Hub provides secure communication for data transfer. Each device has its security key to connect to the Hub and data is encrypted.

Security:

Microsoft meets a huge range of security requirements globally. Azure IoT Hub uses Transport Layer Security (TLS), ensuring encrypted communication. Services and devices control access and credentials with a list of permissions. Developers can follow clear guidelines in the form of the Security Development Lifecycle.

Integrated Application and Services:

Some popular and important services that can be utilized include:

  • Stream Analytics
  • Machine Learning
  • Power BI
  • Time Series Insights
  • Storage
  • Cosmos DB
  • Web Apps

Depending on your size and needs, all these functionalities are generally offered in two paths of IoT adoption: Platform as a Service (PaaS) or Software as a Service (SaaS).

Let’s dive into each path and their benefits

Recommend architecture of IoT applications with Azure PaaS: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/reference-architectures/iot/

PaaS:

Azure Solution Accelerators assist your development process with preconfigured solutions or common IoT scenario templates. However, it gives you full control and maximum flexibility to build a custom solution. The package of PaaS technology provides bi-directional communications among billions of devices with high availability and scalability on the cloud. Devices can connect easily to Azure IoT via open-source SDKs that support multiple programming languages. These devices then can connect to Edge – a sophisticated edge computing strategy that analyzes data on the “edge” device, balances workload, reduces latency, and has offline support scenarios.

The raw data is then transferred to core Azure IoT Hub, which is a central message hub for secure communication and connection among devices and can easily integrate with other tools, for example, Azure Machine Learning, Azure Stream Analytics. From the Hub, telemetry data can be transformed into structured data, and options exist to process them in either a hot path for near real-time or a cold path in a larger time interval in batch. Moreover, Azure boasts a 99.9% Service Level Agreement for IoT Hub.

SaaS:

For some businesses, especially small and medium companies, who don’t emphasize customization, Azure IoT Central is a mature out-of-the-box solution. This service still uses Azure core PaaS. Microsoft provides a service with high accessibility for common and more predictable implementation needs. Although customization ability is restricted, the solution is quick to implement with no cloud experience required. Many smaller businesses now have a chance to adopt and leverage enterprise-grade solutions.

From ready-to-implement SaaS to fully customizable PaaS, Azure IoT provides access to world-class technologies to advance your business. The product choice is dictated by factors such as customization needs and cloud/IoT expertise, which Microsoft partners like Nub8 can assist you with to create a cloud-based IoT solution.