Microsoft wants Azure to power the next gen of IoT devices
SAN FRANCISCO -- Smart devices like Amazon Echo and Nest thermostats are only as intelligent as the data behind them. Otherwise, they're just dumb household gadgets. You can put a computer brain inside any of them, but real-time info will have to come from sensors, the Internet and, increasingly, cloud-connected services.
The Echo's Alexa voice assistant, for instance, has Amazon's cloud behind it.
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Now more future IoT devices and services could have Microsoft's Azure Cloud Services behind them. The company, which already handles a healthy amount of IoT traffic (2 trillion IoT messages are processed each week, according to Microsoft) announced at its annual Build conference that it's making brand new Azure IoT starter kits available to developers on Thursday.
The best part for would-be developers of smart devices and services may be the price. Microsoft is offering the start kits for between $50 and $160.
Also, since many of these smart devices are using a certain lightweight operating system other than Windows, the kits will support both Windows and Linux. The other big benefit of Azure (or really any cloud) behind smart devices is that they can scale up quickly and new intelligence can be added broadly via cloud-driven updates. Those kinds of big-business-level abilities should excite small-scale and emerging IoT developers.
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The smart things announcement was part of a slew of cloud-based updates including the announcement of general availability of Azure Service Fabric Preview for designing always-available cloud apps and services, and Azure Functions Preview, which adds "serverless compute for event-driven solutions" in Azure. Developers can trigger events and will only pay per execution.
In short, developers now have more tools for serverless, cloud-based computing.
Microsoft's IoT announcement comes as it prepares to roll out significant updates this summer to Cortana, its digital assistant, which also collects much of its intelligence from cloud services. No word if Cortana integration will come as part of the Azure toolset.
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Topics Microsoft
Lance Ulanoff was Chief Correspondent and Editor-at-Large of Mashable. Lance acted as a senior member of the editing team, with a focus on defining internal and curated opinion content. He also helped develop staff-wide alternative story-telling skills and implementation of social media tools during live events. Prior to joining Mashable in September 2011 Lance Ulanoff served as Editor in Chief of PCMag.com and Senior Vice President of Content for the Ziff Davis, Inc. While there, he guided the brand to a 100% digital existence and oversaw content strategy for all of Ziff Davis’ Web sites. His long-running column on PCMag.com earned him a Bronze award from the ASBPE. Winmag.com, HomePC.com and PCMag.com were all been honored under Lance’s guidance.He makes frequent appearances on national, international, and local news programs including Fox News, the Today Show, Good Morning America, Kelly and Michael, CNBC, CNN and the BBC.He has also offered commentary on National Public Radio and been interviewed by newspapers and radio stations around the country. Lance has been an invited guest speaker at numerous technology conferences including SXSW, Think Mobile, CEA Line Shows, Digital Life, RoboBusiness, RoboNexus, Business Foresight and Digital Media Wire’s Games and Mobile Forum.
