CloudGate, the leading South African mini-PC manufacturer, today announced it has achieved it’s Microsoft Azure Certification for the Internet of Things (IoT) on its CloudGate X. This ensures that IT providers using CloudGates as part of their Azure IoT service offerings can get solutions up and running with minimal effort, especially when using hardware and software that has been pre-tested and certified by Microsoft. “Being Microsoft Azure Certified for IoT makes it possible to accelerate customers’ IoT adoption with pre-validated hardware and operating system combinations,” said Xavier Nel, Head of Product for CloudGate. “This reduces the customization needed to build the optimal solutions and ensures that CloudGate helps customers get started quickly on their IoT journey.”
Microsoft Azure IoT hub is a managed service which is hosted in the cloud. It allows bi-directional communication between IoT applications and the devices that are linked to it. This cloud-to-device connectivity means commands can be sent to the hardware, policies applied and data gathered thereby significantly enhancing their functionality and making them far easier to deploy and manage. This, in turn, offers companies the opportunity to create tailored made IoT solutions to augment their capabilities, reduce costs and increase revenue.
Some examples of the type of solutions can be built by integrating IoT Hub with other Azure services are:
- Business processes can be automated using Azure Logic Apps.
- Analytic computations can be run in real-time on the data from devices using Azure Stream Analytics.
- AI models and machine learning can be added using Azure Machine Learning.
- Critical events can be responded to rapidly with Azure Event Grid.
Businesses face security, privacy, and compliance challenges which are unique to the IoT. Devices need to be safely provisioned, there needs to be secure connectivity between the devices and the applications, and data must remain protected during processing and storage in the cloud.
Azure IoT Hub allows each device to connect securely using features such as standards-based authentication. Access can be limited on a per-device level and devices are automatically provisioned to the correct hub when they first boot up using policy-based configurations. These mechanisms significantly add to the overall security of the solution.