Elly Yates-Roberts |
Skkynet Cloud Systems has made its DataHub service for real-time industrial data communications available on Microsoft Azure Marketplace, allowing Azure customers to acquire, monitor, control, consolidate and share their live process data.
“The DataHub service provides a unique way to securely integrate operations technology with IT on Microsoft Azure,” said Paul Thomas, president of Skkynet. “Users can now aggregate data feeds from multiple sources, and feed data to dashboards, data lakes, and other connected programs – without exposing their production systems.”
The Skkynet DataHub service connects to Azure IoT Hub for real-time remote monitoring, control, and data logging. Using standard industrial protocols such as OPC Unified Architecture or MQTT, users can also connect directly to applications and programmes that run on Azure or at remote locations.
Security for the solution is based on Skkynet’s patented technology, which uses outbound-only connections to ensure that no attack surface is exposed on a local plant network. This approach does not require IT policy changes, open inbound firewall ports, VPNs or extra hardware, and allows real-time bi-directional data flow through demilitarised zones and network proxies to the cloud.