Azure Receives Enhancements for IoT

Several new offerings aim to bolster Azure’s capabilities for underpinning solutions that work with Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Azure IoT Edge enables certain Azure functionality to run locally on or near IoT devices, reducing latency and addressing connectivity and security issues. Time Series Insights reduces the work to implement solutions that store, analyze, and visualize large-scale incoming data streams. Connected Factory, a new sample solution in the Azure IoT Suite, could help customers build factory automation systems. The offerings could make Azure more applicable to IoT solutions, but they are mostly in early preview states.

Azure Follows IoT Trend

IoT devices are hardware that connect, monitor, and control real-world elements, such as manufacturing equipment, air quality, automobiles, and livestock, over the Internet. The hardware includes sensors, machine actuators, telemetry components, and gateway devices that monitor or control collections of other devices.

IoT devices have gained capabilities and decreased in size and price in recent years, making new solutions, such as those that use real-time machine learning, feasible for more applications and organizations. Furthermore, the amount of data produced by the devices has increased substantially, creating opportunities to gain insights, but raising processing and storage requirements.