Microsoft Azure and Cisco have this week announced an integration to provide customers with a pre-integrated Cisco Edge to Microsoft Azure IoT Hub solutions.
The integration will be beneficial for IT and operations personnel who are trying to set up various edge computing activities.
“Both Azure IoT and Cisco IoT are leaders in the industrial IoT market. The team-up to share the availability of an integrated Azure IoT solution, that provides the necessary software, hardware, and cloud services businesses need to rapidly launch IoT initiatives and quickly realize business value.”Said Tom Shakib, IoT Business Acceleration Leader, Microsoft Azure
Services like Microsoft Azure Stream Analytics, Microsoft Azure Machine Learning, and Microsoft Azure Notification Hub services can quickly build IoT applications for the enterprise.
Additional telemetry processing is also supported by Cisco through local scripts developed in Microsoft Visual Studio, where filtered data can also be uploaded directly into Azure IoT Hub.
This collaboration provides customers with fully integrated solutions. Which will give access to powerful design tools, global connectivity, advance analytics. And additional cognitive services for analyzing IoT data.
“By enabling Azure IoT with Cisco IoT network devices infrastructure, IT, and operations. Teams can quickly take advantage of a wide variety of hardware and easily scalable telemetry collection from connected assets. And kickstart their Azure IoT application development,” Shakib wrote.
“Our customers can now augment their existing Cisco networks. With Azure IoT ready gateways across multiple industries and use cases. Without compromising the ability to implement data control and security that Microsoft and Cisco are known for.”
The main idea is that Cisco’s Edge Intelligence software, announced back in January, can connect with Microsoft’s Azure IoT Hub service, as well as the Azure IoT Hub Device Provisioning Service.
Cisco Edge Intelligence is used to extract and transform data for use with various cloud-based services. Cisco pre-integrates its solution with various IoT platforms to facilitate data sharing.
The Azure IoT Hub service is used for bidirectional messaging between IoT applications and devices. It supports the multiple protocols used by IoT devices.
The IoT Hub Device Provisioning Service offers “zero-touch” provisioning for IoT devices, according to Microsoft. It validates devices, registers them with an IoT hub and adds “256-bit AES encryption” for data at rest.
“Cisco’s IoT Gateways are pre-integrated to work with Azure cloud-based solutions. The integration opens up access by IoT devices to various Azure services, such as Stream Analytics, Machine Learning and Notification Hubs, which “can be used to quickly build IoT applications for the enterprise,” added Shakib.
