Microsoft has unveiled a whole array of upgrades to its Azure IoT Central platform that it launched in 2017 to make it easy for enterprises to connect IoT-enabled devices.
This is designed as an end-to-end IoT software as a service (SaaS) solution in the cloud that helped customers build, use, and maintain internet connected products.
Well, the company is now so confident that it claims you can use IoT Central to provision an IoT application in 15 seconds, customize it in an hour, and go to production the same day. This, thanks to several breakthrough features that Microsoft announced at IoT Solutions World Congress this week.
Redmond says that these improvements help drive better business outcomes through the SaaS suite, which is now growing nearly 150% year-over-year.
Azure IoT CVP Sam George:
“We live in an increasingly connected world. At Microsoft, we are committed to providing a trusted, easy-to-use platform that allows our customers and partners to build seamless, smart, and secure solutions regardless of where they are in their IoT journey.”
The company has set aside $5 billion for IoT and the intelligent edge over the next four years, with this investment already been used in some acquisitions like that of real-time operating systems developer Express Logic.
Microsoft will also roll out new Azure IoT Central pricing model in early 2020 to provide customers and partners predictable pricing as usage scales.
You can take a look at the full list of additions in the link above.
But there are IoT Hub message enhancements that enables messages to get rich information attached before they are sent, while Azure Event Grid integration is focused on easing device telemetry events sending to Azure and third parties.
Azure Maps are also refreshed to now integrate more heavily with Power BI business analytics service.
And then you have Azure Time Series Insights, the analytics, storage, and visualization service, which has also been updated with a bunch of new storage and analytics features.
