Connected Factory, Microsoft IoT Central and Azure Time Series to support digital transformation
Toby Ingleton |
Microsoft has introduced a new software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering that aims to reduce the complexity of internet of things (IoT) solutions.
Microsoft IoT Central is a fully managed SaaS offering for both customers and partners, and helps enable IoT scenarios without the need for cloud solution expertise.
The new offering is built on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, and helps simplify the development process around IoT and the cloud. This will help customers and partners reach their goals in this space more efficiently.
Microsoft IoT Central will complement the existing Azure IoT Suite, a platform-as-a-service solution that enables deep customisation and users to have full control over their processes.
“This new IoT SaaS offering has the potential to dramatically increase the speed at which manufacturers can innovate and bring new products to market, as well as lower the barriers to creating IoT solutions that generate new revenue opportunities and better experiences for customers,” said Sam George, partner director, Azure IoT.
Microsoft has also unveiled a number of other IoT solutions to help support users in their digital transformation efforts.
Connected Factory will form part of the Azure IoT Suite and will be revealed at next week’s Hannover Messe event. This solution helps connect on-premises OPC UA and OPC Classic devices to the Microsoft cloud and gain insight.
Microsoft has released more details about Azure Time Series Insights – an analytics, storage and visualisation service that lets users explore billions of events from an IoT solution.
“Azure Time Series Insights provides a global view of data across various event sources so companies can quickly validate their IoT solutions and avoid costly downtime of mission-critical devices,” said George. “It helps organisations discover hidden trends, spot anomalies, and conduct root-cause analysis in near real time, all without writing a single line of code through its simple and intuitive user experience. In addition, it provides rich application programming interfaces to enable companies to integrate its powerful capabilities into their existing workflows and applications.”
Other solutions unveiled include Microsoft Azure Stream Analytics on edge devices, which extends the benefits of streaming from the cloud to the device level, and the Microsoft Azure IoT Hub Device Provisioning service, which makes it easier for organisations to register and provision devices in the IoT Hub.