Microsoft Azure IoT Hub will open the Internet of Things to a global audience, enabling secure, reliable two-way communication from device to cloud and vice versa
Microsoft have announced that their Internet of Things (IoT) hub is now generally available. The Azure IoT Hub provides an easy and secure way to connect, provision and manage billions of IoT devices sending and receiving trillions of messages per month.
It acts as the bridge between customers’ devices and their solutions in the cloud, allowing them to store, analyse and act on that data in real time. Azure has a pricing structure based on the number of messages exchanged each month, with the smallest package of 400,000 messages per month available for a unit cost of $US 50 per month – a free trial of up to 8000 messages a day is available, allowing SMEs to evaluate whether the capability of the service and whether or not it would be cost-effective for them.
Enabling secure, reliable two-way communication – from device to cloud and cloud to device – over open protocols such as MQTT, HTTPS and AMQPS that are already widely used in the Internet of Things, the hub makes it simple to integrate with other Azure services, such as Azure Machine Learning to find deep insights that power IoT businesses, and Azure Stream Analytics to act on those insights in real time by simultaneously monitoring millions of devices and taking action.
When Microsoft first announced the Azure IoT Suite in September, the company also launched Microsoft Azure Certified for IoT, to ensure IoT solutions from global technology leaders are fully interoperable from the start. Nearly 30 industry leaders have joined the program over the past three-plus months, with even more now announcing their participation including Advantech, Dell, HPE, and Libelium.
