Azure IoT Operations now Generally Available

Starting today, Azure IoT Operations is generally available for Azure customers!

Azure IoT Operationsis a full-stack data plane, that runs in an on-premises Arc-enabled Kubernetes cluster.  It empowers customers to discover, collect, process, and send data from the edge to the cloud using open standards and open protocols that are managed and supported by Microsoft. Azure IoT Operations leverages an adaptive cloud approach to extend the cloud management pattern down to the physical site, using the same cloud deployment and management controls as Azure to enable unique advantages in repeatability and scalability across the enterprise.

Azure IoT Operations enables customers to eliminate siloed systems, so that organizations can control and analyze data flowing from physical environments alongside business data and service configurations within their existing Azure estate. Azure IoT Operations uses Azure Device Registry (ADR) as a generally available service to enable definitions of assets at the edge to be represented as Azure resources, extending familiar Azure management concepts and enabling a consistent management experience across the cloud-to-edge continuum.

With Azure IoT Operations, companies simplify the process of gathering data and insights from physical operations. This solution enables seamless data flow from facilities to natively integrated cloud destinations, including Microsoft Fabric, Azure Event Hubs, and Azure Event Grid's MQTT broker which provides real-time insights and AI-driven decision-making and helps organizations quickly implement advanced applications like factory line monitoring and high-speed AI quality inspection.

Azure IoT Operations enables a full-stack data plane on the edge, which brings the following capabilities to Azure’s adaptive cloud approach.

Data Handling: Process edge data, locally, with high availability and send it to Azure services using the latest service features and security.

AI Foundation: Enable low latency ML models using your data in your edge cluster. Copilots enhance both cloud data and data management.

Azure Resource Configuration for Data: Configure assets for edge data sampling, endpoints for protocol connectivity, and Azure service data flows with transformations using Azure Resources.

Extensibility and Scale: Unlock Kubernetes native applications, highly extensible, scalable, resilient, and secure with integration points for customer workloads and a unified solution.

Azure IoT Operations capabilities and foundation on the adaptive cloud approach

Azure IoT Operations provides significant capabilities for customers to begin their adaptive cloud journey.

• Collect data into Azure IoT Operations from your machines using the connector for OPC UA utilizing standardized message encoding and schemas.

  Azure IoT Operations includes built in support for connecting to industrial assets

• Enable local data access and storage with a highly available, scalable, and cloud managed MQTT broker. The MQTT Broker is compliant with MQTT v3.1.1 and v5 bringing authentication, authorization and configurations for near-zero data loss highly available replication. It also enables unified name space topic configuration via Azure Device Registry Assets and seamless integration to other Kubernetes workloads.Azure IoT Operations cloud managed MQTT broker
• Empower OT employees to create assets and data flow configurations using the operations experience. This portal is built to enable OT workflows and is available as an independent resource at http://iotoperations.azure.com.OT professionals can manage assets and data flows via the operations experience
• Flow data to edge and Azure endpoints with customer configured edge transformations and contextualization using the data flows feature of Azure IoT Operations. Data flows are created and managed via the operations experience portal.Edge-based data flows are easy to set up and manage
• Manage edge data configurations with Azure Device Registry. Azure Device Registry offers several key capabilities for managing devices and assets across cloud and edge environments. It acts as a unified registry, serving as a single source of truth for asset metadata, making it easy to access and manage assets from various applications. Additionally, assets are projected as true Azure resources, allowing enterprises to leverage established Azure features such as Azure Resource Manager, resource groups, tags, role-based access control (RBAC), and more. This integration provides a cohesive way to manage assets both in the cloud and on the edge, with changes synchronized seamlessly across environments.Azure Device Registry is a single source of truth for asset metadata

Arc-enabled Kubernetes Services

Azure IoT Operations is built on a foundation of integrated Arc-enabled Kubernetes services which improve security and further enhance cloud-based management.

• Azure Key Vault Secret Store extension creates a connection to Azure Key Vault to securely store and manage edge secrets in the cloud.
• Azure Container Storage enabled by Azure Arc provides a connection to Microsoft Fabric and Azure Blob Storage. Azure Container Storage offers scalable and flexible persistent storage for containerized workloads, simplifying data management across Kubernetes environments. It provides seamless integration with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), enabling easy provisioning, management, and scaling of storage volumes to meet the needs of container-based applications.
• Azure Arc gateway simplifies network configurations by reducing the number of required endpoints to onboard infrastructure to Azure Arc, enabling connections with just seven Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDNs).

As Microsoft’s commercial quality full-stack data plane enabled by Azure Arc, Azure IoT Operations serves as a foundational component in Azure's adaptive cloud approach. The adaptive cloud approach brings together siloed teams, distributed sites, and sprawling systems into a single operations, security, application, and data model, enabling organizations to leverage cloud-native and AI technologies across hybrid, multi-cloud, edge, and IoT.  By using Azure Arc, Azure’s adaptive cloud approach connects legacy systems and siloed data into a cohesive, scalable framework, ensuring the consistent application of AI and cloud-native technologies to enable innovation and rapid scale across distributed infrastructures across edge and cloud.  The adaptive cloud approach is characterized by:

1. Unified cloud and edge platforms
2. AI-enhanced central management plane with advanced security and health monitoring
3. Usage of cross company identities and authorizations
4. Composition from open standards and frameworks
5. Enterprise-wide data plane accessibility

 Learn more at our launch events

Azure IoT Operations can help super charge at scale operations. At Rockwell Automation Fair and Microsoft Ignite, we are presenting an industrial fluid demo that demonstrates how Azure IoT Operations comes together with technologies from Rockwell Automation and NVIDIA to deliver high value edge to cloud scenarios such as remote operations, digital inspection, and AI performance analysis. Through our ecosystem partners, we are enabling well-integrated solution blueprints that take an adaptive cloud approach to accelerate AI-assisted factory automation. This ensures that customers can seamlessly leverage partner industrial solutions with Azure to achieve their modernization goals faster.

Learn more and check out these demonstrations at:

Rockwell Automation Fair

• • Microsoft booth 560
  • DT26 – Rockwell and Microsoft: Accelerating Deployment and Scalability for the Factory of the Future with Microsoft’s Adaptive Cloud and AI

Microsoft Ignite

• • BRK262​ Accelerate industrial transformation with Azure IoT operations​
  • THR628​ Bringing the power of Azure AI to your adaptive cloud environments​
  • LAB460 Transform industries with Azure IoT, AI, Edge and operational excellence​

Customers and Partners

Microsoft has a proven history of collaborating with partners to deliver successful IoT deployments. Through Azure IoT Operations, we aim to build on past partner motions and success, enhancing agility, scalability, and flexibility to expedite industrial transformation in the era of AI.

You can learn more about how adaptive cloud and Azure IoT Operations is helping customers like Chevron at https://aka.ms/Ignite24/blog/unifydistributeddata.  And, you can learn more about the Azure IoT Operations partner ecosystem and how partners like Rockwell and NVIDIA are applying this technology at https://aka.ms/aiopartnerblog.

Get Started 

Check out Azure IoT Operations for yourself by visiting http://aka.ms/AzureIoTOperations and get hands-on with Azure Arc Jumpstart. Learn more about the adaptive cloud approach and how it helps unify data and AI across a distributed estate.