Microsoft Azure IoT hub vs AWS IoT

The enormous cloud duo have entered the Internet of Things (IoT) space. Each one is offering new services and investing in their IoT platforms. The smart cities will have a strong effective future in which IoT and analytics plays an important role in both private and public services. Let us compare Microsoft Azure IoT hub vs AWS IoT.

Microsoft Azure IoT vs AWS IoT

What is IoT?

IoT is an abbreviation of Internet of Things. It refers to the continuous growing network of physical objects that feature an IP address for internet connectivity. It also feature the communication that occurs between these objects and other Internet-enabled devices and systems. Microsoft Azure IoT and AWS IoT are the most famous IoT services among all. IoT has a potential to manage lighting, parking, waste management. Smart city revolution is about connecting people, process, data and things through technology to enable more efficient, smarter living. IoT has potential to develop cities with technology.

Microsoft Azure IoT-

Microsoft’s cloud solution is Microsoft Azure. It offers a substantial number of cloud services, including mobile app services, storage offerings, messaging platforms and virtual machines. It enables not only reliable but also secure bi – directional communication between millions of IoT devices and a solution back end. Azure Con 2015 launched Azure IoT on Sept 29, 2015. It offers plenty of products targeted for use in IoT product development. According to price, Azure IoT is cheaper than AWS IoT platforms.

Features of Azure IoT-

Azure IoT Hub –

IoT Hub also supports numerous open- source SDKs, including .NET, Javascript, Java, C and Python. IoT Hub is the focal territory for developers to develop IoT applications and to connect, monitor and also to analyze. It can manage billions of edge devices with the help of bi – directional messaging. It is a flexible cloud platform as a service (PaaS) that supports multiple protocols (AMPQ, MQTT and HTTP). If a device does not support any one of these protocols then incoming and outgoing traffic can be adjusted using the Azure IoT protocol gateway.

Some of the central features include the use of authentication control per device, bidirectional communication between IoT devices using device- to- cloud telemetry data, and the ability to accelerate the deployment and scaling of IoT services by registering and provisioning devices using zero touch. It allows developers to pack their cloud workloads and run them locally on devices using Azure IoT edge. According to prize, it is grouped into 4 categories including free tiers which has up to the high throughput S3 tier, capable of  supporting up to 300,000,000 messages per day. Each tier added by extra units for more throughput. Messages are sent in 4 KB blocks, for billing purposes. A message upto max 512 KB is count as each block.

Azure IoT Edge –

IoT Edge stretches cloud intelligence and analytics to edge devices at a local level. It expands the deployment of AI, Azure services, and custom logic directly to cross-platform IoT devices. With AWS, the IoT when deployed via Azure IoT Edge can run securely and efficiently even when the devices are offline. IoT Edge has extremely low latency and near real-time response potential, thereby optimizing performance between edge and cloud. It works with the AI Toolkit for Azure IoT Edge. This means that, complex AI and ML tasks such as image recognition and complex event processing can easily run without the need to write them in-house. One of the biggest risks for both customers and enterprises is to secure the data. Hence, Azure has consistently been at the forefront of cyber-security as compared to AWS.

Azure IoT central-

Azure IoT Central is built on the enterprise- grade Azure services that allow integration with existing business processes and systems. It is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) for IoT. And also is a fully managed solution. This means is that, the users without any coding or development skills can build production-grade IoT applications. It is very quick to deploy production-grade IoT applications and ensures to eliminate the need for management of infrastructure and hiring developers with specific skills.This makes Azure IoT Central one of the best platforms for IoT development. It is operated with an interface that allows developers to connect, manage and control access to millions of connected products remotely across their entire life-cycle.

Azure IoT Solution Accelerators –

It is a customizable set of templates for common IoT scenarios such as remote monitoring, a connected factory and predictive maintenance. There is a connected device simulation accelerator, which allows developers to test- run their chosen IoT solution with tens of thousands of simulated devices over the development cycle.

AWS IoT-

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the public cloud leader and it has been putting a lot of effort into cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and IoT for a long time now. It provides IoT services through its AWS IoT platform, which comes with a broad set of tools. It offers many solutions that span edge to the cloud, allow developers for most of the use cases over a wide range of devices. These solutions consist of local data collection and analysis, devices and cloud services to store and analyze device data.

The AWS IoT stage is more costly than its adversaries, however in general, AWS is essentially in ahead of the others in terms of market share of the cloud computing space. Devices can communicate with applications running in the cloud over HTTP, MQTT and also WebSockets. This communication can secured with the use of TLS. Device specific SDKs are available for Embedded C, JavaScript, Python, iOS, Android and Arduino Yun. Device shadow is a device that connects with AWS. It maintains the identity and last known state of a specific device and acts as a channel to send and receive messages.

AWS IoT Services-

Amazon FreeRTOS –

Amazon FreeRTOS is a microcontroller operating system. This focuses on allowing easy programming and management of small, low-power edge devices. It is based on the FreeRTOS kernel, an open source operating system for microcontrollers. AWS’ service extends the free version with software libraries which allows easy connections between small and low-power devices (such as appliances, fitness trackers and automobiles) with AWS’ wider set of cloud services, such as AWS IoT Core or to other bigger edge devices running AWS Greengrass.

Microcontrollers (MCUs) are single chips consisting of a simple processor. They have limited memory capacity and compute power and so they can only perform simple, functional tasks. Generally microcontrollers can not run on operating systems with built in functionality to connect to the cloud or local networks. This makes IoT services more challenging. Amazon FreeRTOS was built to solve this problem by allowing to connect the core operating system with software libraries. It makes a secure connection to the cloud easy.

AWS Greengrass –

It is software that securely allows the running of local compute, data caching and messaging for connected devices. Connected devices can run AWS Lambda functions via AWS Greengrass. It also enables the keeping of device data in synchronized and securely communicating with other devices even though not connected to the internet.  This means that Greengrass connected IoT devices can still respond quickly to local events, interact with local resources (via Lambda functions), stay updated and minimize the costs associated with transmitting IoT data to the cloud. Devices can then act locally on the data they are generating in addition to using the cloud for backup storage, management and analytics.

AWS IoT Core –

It is AWS’ overseen cloud stage that allows the clear and secure interaction between connected devices, cloud applications and other devices, the thought being to permit the simple structure of IoT applications, for example, associated home or industrial solutions. Also, IoT Core has the functionality to support billions of devices and trillions of messages. This also includes the processing and routing of those messages to AWS endpoints and other devices. IoT Core also connects to AWS IoT Analytics, which empowers the building of analytics and machine learning models.

Final Words-

The IoT market will grow over the years, and demand for IoT developers and IoT development services will also increase. There are various IoT technologies and platforms are available to build IoT projects. Therefore, it becomes complicated for developers and enterprises to select the best one. So we have compared the AWS IoT and Azure IoT to make things easier.

If you’re interested in migrating to the cloud, then we’re more than happy to help you get started. Solace is there to help you for cloud platform. We believe in benefits of using Microsoft azure and AWS IoT. We will provide the means to bring your company the success it deserves. Contact us for incorporating azure or AWS in a business.

Top 7 IoT Cloud Platforms

What is an IoT platform?

IoT platform is a multi-layer technology used to manage and automate the connected devices. In short, it is a service which helps you in bringing the physical objects online. This platform will provide you the services to connect the devices for a machine to machine communication. 

Internet of Things (IoT) is a software that connects the edge hardware, access points, and also data networks to the other end which is usually the end-user application.

Some facts about these platforms:

• The main function of the IoT platform is to act as middleware or as plumbing to connect devices or applications to another end. IoT contains Sensors & controllers, a gateway device, communication network, data analyzing & translating software, and also end application service.
• This cloud platform can handle huge data volume from devices, customers, applications, websites, and sensors and take actions to give a real-time response.
• How to select the best Internet of Things platform depends on the requirements of a company for hardware, real-time access, custom reports, budget, development skills, and the business model also.

Top 7 IoT cloud Platforms-

1. Amazon web services IOT core-

The AWS or Amazon Web Service is advantageous of the first class organization of eCommerce named Amazon. Under the parasol of AWS, the company Amazon affords cloud platforms on-demand, and these cloud platforms offer you data analysis, storage, etc. Amazon also provides services to companies, governments, and individuals with a massive share of 35%. AWS enables the subscribers to get benefitted from a full-blown virtual cluster of computers which is based on their requirements. Amazon is the most flexible and powerful solution. The virtual cloud platform of AWS comes with nearly all of the attributes of a computer which includes hardware, pre-loaded applications, databases, an operating system, CRM, etc.

Features- 

• AWS can process a huge amount of messages.
• It is a reliable and secure platform to route the messages to AWS endpoints and other devices.
• You can also use other AWS services like AWS Lambda, Amazon Kinesis, and Amazon QuickSight etc.
• This cloud platform allows secure access to devices. 
• Your applications will track and communicate even when not connected.

2. Google Cloud Platform-

Google Cloud provides a multi-layered secure infrastructure. It helps in improving operational efficiency. It provides predictive maintenance for equipment, solutions for smart cities & buildings, and real-time asset tracking also.

Features:

• Machine learning capabilities for any IoT need.
• Real-time business insights for globally dispersed devices.
• AI capabilities.
• Provides support for a wide range of embedded operating systems.
• Location intelligence.

3. Microsoft Azure IoT Hub-

Microsoft Azure IoT Hub is developed for multiple industry requirements. They have got machine learning (ML), cloud storage, IoT services and for IoT devices this company has also improved their own operating system. At any stage like manufacturing, transportation and also retail, it can be used. It provides solutions for remote monitoring, predictive maintenance, smart spaces, and connected products. You can also see the comparison of Microsoft Azure IoT hub and AWS IoT at- Microsoft Azure IoT hub vs AWS IoT.

Features:

• It is an open platform to build a robust application.
• Not only experts but also beginners can use it.
• There are two solutions to start with, as an IoT SaaS and with open source IoT Templates.

4. Salesforce IoT Architecture-

The cloud platforms of Salesforce are powered by the Thunder. Thunder focuses on the idea of real-time and high-speed decision making. Salesforce IoT cloud will assist you with transforming all information which is created by the clients, accomplices, devices and sensors into significant activities. It has partner connectors like AWS, Cisco Systems, etc. The Salesforce puts emphasize on the customer relationship management. 

Features:

• Salesforce IoT architecture allows you to test business ideas without programming.
• It will provide you the real data about the product usage and performance.
• It can work with the data from any device.
• You can create device profiles for customer context data in CRM and for streaming data from the connected devices.
• Using RESTful API, you can import data from any source.
• In Salesforce IoT, no need of CS degree while creating and managing orchestration rules.
• Real-time traffic view.

5. IBM Bluemix-

IBM Bluemix cloud computing solution comes with Paas and IaaS together. This means that you can get a platform along with the IoT architecture as services. With the use of this, one can easily deploy and get access to the virtualized to compute power, networking and storage via the internet. These services can be used in private, public or hybrid model that suits the requirements of your organization. The PaaS of these IoT Cloud Platforms is based on open source IoT platforms that are called Cloud Foundry. Developers can use its services for creating, running, managing and deploying scalable applications for on-premises and public cloud environments.

6. Oracle IoT architecture-

This is one of the best cloud platforms  that focuses on logistics and manufacturing operations. It will help you to get the products faster than ever. 

Features:

• Oracle IoT will allow you to create an IoT application and connect a device to JavaScript, Android, iOS, Java, and C POSIX.
• It will help you to extend the supply chain, ERP, HR, and customer experience applications.
• With this IoT architecture, Operational efficiency and worker productivity will be improved.
• It provides features like device virtualization, high-speed messaging, and endpoint management to connect.
• To analyze the data, it provides features like stream processing and data enrichment.

7. Cisco IoT cloud connect-

Cisco has a strong belief that the chances of the future rely on the cloud and hence they have improved a unique sector named “mobility-cloud-based software suite”. It’s main goal is to strengthen your relationship with the customers. Cisco helps you to find new ways of connecting with other devices. This IoT solution is for mobile operators. Cisco provides IoT solutions for networking, security, and data management.

Features:

• Granular and real-time visibility.
• This cloud platform provides updates for every level of the network.
• For IoT security, it provides benefits of protecting the control system from human errors & attacks, increased visibility & control by defending malware and intrusion, and centralized security controls.

At Solace, IoT Development is a strength of developers in which we take great pride. If you’re interested in adopting IoT for your business, then you might need some help getting started. Solace expert’s are here to help you with knowledge of IoT cloud platforms. Contact us for any IoT development that set you on your way to business growth.

Drupal 8 on azure 7 reasons why it is a match made in heaven

https://solaceinfotech.com/blog/benefits-of-drupal-8-on-azure/
First of all, Drupal 8 is the greatest release of Drupal. It is the most widely used enterprise web content management system. Developers like it and prefer for its speed and flexibility also. The main platform of Drupal has more than 200 in built features to help businesses to create memorable digital experiences.

Drupal 8

Drupal 8 offers mobile-first approach and also supports responsive design. The content authoring in Drupal is easier. Drupal 8 helps in creating great online experiences for audiences across the globe with better globalization and multi-lingual support. Drupal 8 is being adopted twice as fast as Drupal 7 had been. Code of Drupal 8 includes object-oriented classes, interfaces, inheritance. It uses PHP standards and requires at least PHP 5.5. 

Most common question is- Which is the right platform for hosting Drupal websites? There is not a complete solution which fits it all. Drupal 8 sites on Azure gives many business benefits. 

Benefits of Drupal 8 on Azure-

Azure, the cloud platform operated by Microsoft, is an high-level hosting environment providing:

• Managed web server instances (Web Worker Role)
• Database services (SQL Azure)
• Similarly, File storage and distribution (Azure Blob Storage)
• CDN and caching for both the web server instances and the file distribution
• Simple object storage (Azure Table)
• And other related services (less useful for Drupal)

Reasons why Microsoft Azure is a good platform for Drupal hosting- 

1. Drupal Web App- 

It is very easy and also simple to migrate a Drupal website to Azure Web App. By following some easy steps, complete Drupal site can be moved within an hour. These simple steps include the creation of Azure website, the creation of MySQL database and copying it to Azure Web Apps and developing the code using version control tools such as Git BitBucket.

2. Pre-Installed Drupal Tools- 

Developers using some popular version control tools such as Git and BigBucket. Azure has made these tools available pre-installed with just only plug-and-play with its platform. By using this, developers can continue to use these tools of their choice and also improve their development workflows.

3. Ready modules for authentication, file storage-

There are various ready made modules accessible in Drupal for commonly used tasks, For eg., authentication, controlling access and likewise distributed file storage. With the use of such modules, developers can save a lot of development time and as a result influence the ready made connectivity with Azure platform. Many of these modules uses libraries of Microsoft and these are stable and scalable also. 

4. Caching tools-

Those websites having heavy content need to use caching tools. These tools are used to provide better search options for a hazard free user experience. Varnish and Memcache are caching tools and search experience enhancers like Apache Solr are popular within developers community. These tools are available as plug-ins with Microsoft Azure. It makes easy to integrate with the websites and also to increase the speed of website. 

5. Application performance management with application insights-

Application insights is most useful service for web developers. This service helps developers to monitor the performance of their live web applications. It identifies the performance issues. Similarly, it provides necessary analytics tools to help the developers to analyze issues and use of application by the end users. With the use of insights, developers can continuously improve the performance. Insights can also improves the usability of their application. Application insights is correctly hosted within Microsoft Azure. It is free to use until the application has significant use.

6. Premium Partnership-

Microsoft Azure is Premium Technology supporter for Drupal. By this partnership it is more easy and also simple for Drupal developers to instantly start using Windows and Linux Virtual Machines, apps and infrastructure within Microsoft-managed data centers around the world. Using Visual Studio tools, developers can develop and debug apps fast. Due to the features such as built-in auto-scaling and pre-minute billing, organizations that uses Drupal can save money and agile.

7. Used by industries-

Not only organizations but also educational institutes are using the combination of Drupal and Azure for their web applications. For eg.,

1. Group INSEEC- It is one of the biggest international professional training providers which delivers high-quality training not only for luxury but also for hospitality customers.

2. Shezlong- It is an Egypt-based startup which offers online psychotherapy for millions of sufferers.

3. ESADE Business School- It is one of the major international professional training providers. So it delivers high-quality training and hospitality customers. 

Final Words-

If you are searching for a hassle-free Drupal hosting, you should go with the various options provided by Microsoft Azure. It is highly secure and also offers great performance for delivering seamless digital experiences through your Drupal web application. Microsoft offers well documentation and videos for quick assistance.

Are you looking to develop a website for your business? We have a dedicated team that believes in benefits and effectiveness of hosting drupal website on azure platform. Develop a website with Solace that will help you to set you on your way to success of business. Contact us for your effective website development to stand out in the market.