Microsoft has embraced the “Internet of Things”, IoT for short, with two services offered by Microsoft Azure: Azure IoT Suite and Azure IoT Hubs.
The Azure IoT Suite is set of pre-assembled Azure Services which help you quickly get started with pre-configured IoT solutions such as predictive maintenance and remote monitoring. With these pre-configured solutions, you can quickly connect your “things” to Azure and easily have access to all of the rich services that Azure provides, without the time it takes to configure each specific service.
One of these services, in particular, is worth mentioning. The Azure IoT Hub provides a service gateway for all of your “things” to connect. Azure IoT Hub makes device management and authentication simple and easy while also providing bi-directional communication with your devices. Who says that the “Internet of Things” is only about one-way, device-to-cloud communication? With Azure IoT Hub, you can not only process device-to-cloud messages, but also cloud-to-device messages. Push down configuration data, request-response results, and more! No more custom services or APIs are necessary!
It starts with Device Management. With a publicly exposed endpoint for sending data, we must ensure that only authorized individuals and devices can access our endpoint. Azure IoT Hub offers an easy to use API for registering your devices, querying for your devices, and device removal. Registered devices are provided a key which can be used for accessing the IoT Hub endpoint. This API can be used as part of your device provisioning process, plugging it directly into the Azure IoT Hub.
With the Azure IoT Suite and Azure IoT Hub, Microsoft has provided a low barrier of entry into the IoT space.
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