At Build 2017, Microsoft announced Azure IoT Edge. Azure IoT Edge is a ground-breaking set of capabilities that will extend the existing IoT gateway offering to simply IoT further. This capability spans across cloud and IoT edge devices that make it easy to securely distribute cloud intelligence locally.
Azure IoT Edge is cross platform, and runs on both Windows and Linux, and devices smaller than a Raspberry Pi with as little as 128MB of memory. These devices are then referred to as IoT edge devices. Once the intelligence is in place, you can then take advantage of analytics and insights closer to the source of the data, saving customer time and money.
For example, a factory needs immediate response times to stop operations when an equipment failure is predicted by local intelligence, or to protect worker safety in the event of an accident.
Enabling cloud intelligence at the edge
To light up new IoT use cases, Azure IoT Edge enables an ecosystem of Microsoft and third-party services at the edge.
Azure IoT Edge enables seamless deployment of cloud services such as:
- Azure Machine Learning
- Azure Stream Analytics
- Azure Functions
- Artificial Intelligence, including Cognitive Services
- Azure IoT Hub communication and device management features
One biggest advantage of Azure IoT edge is that it can reliably and securely operate offline or with intermittent network connectivity to the cloud. Once the connectivity is restored, edge devices automatically sync their latest state and continue to function seamlessly, regardless of ongoing connectivity.
For more information on Microsoft Azure IoT Edge, please visit this page
