Microsoft showcases latest industrial IoT innovations at SPS 2017
We are excited to extend our lead in standards-based Industrie 4.0 cloud solutions using the industrial interoperability standard OPC UA, with several new product announcements at SPS IPC Drives 2017 in Nuernberg, Europe’s leading industrial automation exhibition, which takes place next week. We continue to be the only cloud provider that offers both OPC UA client/server as well as the upcoming (in OPC UA version 1.04) Publish/Subscribe communication pattern to the cloud and back with open-source modules for easy connection to existing machines, without requiring changes to these machines and without requiring opening the on-premises firewall. We achieve this through the two Azure IoT Edge modules OPC Proxy and OPC Publisher, which are available open-source on GitHub and as Docker containers on DockerHub. Read about it in the Azure blog.Announcing Azure Time Series Insights
Today we are excited to announce the public preview of Azure Time Series Insights, a fully managed analytics, storage, and visualization service that makes it incredibly simple to interactively and instantly explore and analyze billions of events from sources such as Internet of Things. Time Series Insights gives you a near real time global view of your data across various event sources and lets you quickly validate IoT solutions and avoid costly downtime of mission-critical devices. It helps you discover hidden trends, spot anomalies, conduct root-cause analysis in near real-time, all without writing a single line of code through its simple and intuitive user experience. Additionally, it provides rich API’s to enable you to integrate its powerful capabilities in your own existing workflow or application. Today more than ever, with increasing connected devices and massive advances in the collection of data, businesses are struggling to quickly derive insights from the sheer volume of data generated from geographically dispersed devices and solutions. In addition to the massive scale, there is also a growing need for deriving insights from the millions of events being generated in near real time. Any delay in insights can cause significant downtime and business impact. Additionally, the need to correlate data from a variety of different sensors is paramount to debug and optimize business processes and workflows. Reducing the time and expertise required for this is essential for businesses to gain a competitive edge and optimize their operations. Azure Time Series Insights solves these and many more challenges for your IoT solutions. Read about it on the Azure blog.Microsoft IoT Central delivers low-code way to build IoT solutions fast
Following a successful limited preview, we are announcing the public preview of Microsoft IoT Central. Microsoft IoT Central is the first true highly scalable IoT SaaS solution that has built-in support for IoT best practices and world-class security along with the reliability, regional availability, and the global scale of the Azure cloud. Microsoft IoT Central allows companies throughout the world to build production-grade IoT applications in hours and not worry about managing all the necessary backend infrastructure or hiring new skill sets to develop the solutions. In short, Microsoft IoT Central makes it so that everyone can benefit from IoT. Read about it in the Azure blog.Azure IoT Edge open for developers to build for the intelligent edge
As businesses learn to harness the transformational power of IoT, IoT devices are becoming a mission-critical business asset. Today, IoT solutions use IoT devices to sense things in the real world with processing and decision making happening in the cloud, but as IoT continues to mature there are many use cases where it’s more appropriate to process data or take action directly on the IoT device itself. Earlier this year at our //Build developer conference, we introduced a revolutionary new product, Azure IoT Edge, to address these needs. Azure IoT Edge enables businesses to run cloud intelligence directly on IoT devices even smaller than a Raspberry Pi or as powerful as they need. Read about it in the Azure blog.Azure Stream Analytics now available on IoT Edge
Today, we are announcing the public preview of Azure Stream Analytics running on Azure IoT Edge. Azure Stream Analytics on IoT Edge empowers developers to deploy near-real-time analytical intelligence closer to IoT devices so that they can unlock the full value of device-generated data. Designed for customers requiring low latency, resiliency, efficient use of bandwidth and compliance, enterprises can now deploy control logic close to the industrial operations and complement Big Data analytics done in the cloud. Read about it in the Azure blog.Announcing Azure Location Based Services public preview
Today we announced the Public Preview availability of Azure Location Based Services (LBS). LBS is a portfolio of geospatial service APIs natively integrated into Azure that enable developers, enterprises and ISVs to create location aware apps and IoT, mobility, logistics and asset tracking solutions. The portfolio currently comprises of services for Map Rendering, Routing, Search, Time Zones and Traffic. In partnership with TomTom and in support of our enterprise customers, Microsoft has added native location capabilities to the Azure public cloud. Azure LBS has a robust set of geospatial services atop a global geographic data set. These services are comprised of 5 primary REST services and a JavaScript Map Control. Each service has a unique set of capabilities atop of the base map data and are built in unison and in accordance with Azure standards making it easy to work interoperable between the services. Additionally, Azure LBS is fully hosted and integrated into the Azure cloud meaning the services are compliant with all Azure fundamentals for privacy, usability, global readiness, accessibility and localization. Users can manage all Azure LBS account information from within the Azure portal and billed like any other Azure service. Read about it in the Azure blog.Securing the Intelligent Edge
The Intelligent Edge brings the power of the cloud to mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) devices and demands security for trust. Azure IoT Edge is an implementation of the Intelligent Edge. Cloud-enabled computing at the edge means concentrating data, and therefore inherent value even if only momentarily. It also means moving tremendous value from the cloud to the edge in the form of intellectual property, algorithms, curated parameters, and value operations like policy enforcements, metering, and monetization. The Intelligent Edge is without a doubt a high-value bullseye to nefarious hacking and demands a high bar for security. Securing it requires a community effort and Microsoft, in alliance with many companies, is making great strides in this direction. Why should an Intelligent Edge device demand the same rigor with which we secure the Microsoft Cloud? The Intelligent Edge device is physically accessible to potentially malicious actors, and therefore exposed to greater threats. These range from physical tampering to exploits from repurposing tools and knowledge from other disciplines. Read about it in the Azure blog.
