Microsoft has revealed the next step in its foray into the Internet of Things. The Microsoft Convergence 2015 in Atlanta was witness to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella unveil the Azure IoT Suite and an IoT integrated Windows 10 operating system.

Azure is Microsoft’s open, enterprise-grade cloud computing platform.providing both IaaS and PaaS. In April last year, the Azure Intelligent Systems Service was previewed which would ‘securely connect, manage and capture machine-generated data from sensors and devices.’ The Azure IoT Suite is being touted as the Intelligent Systems Service’s evolution and maturation through customer and partner feedback.

Takeshi Numoto, the Corporate Vice President, Cloud and Enterprise Marketing for Microsoft writes:

The Azure IoT Suite is an integrated offering that takes advantage of all the relevant Azure capabilities to connect devices and other assets (i.e. “things”), capture the diverse and voluminous data they generate, integrate and orchestrate the flow of that data, and manage, analyze and present it as usable information to the people who need it to make better decisions as well as intelligently automate operations. The offering, while customizable to fit the unique needs of organizations, will also provide finished applications to speed deployment of common scenarios we see across many industries, such as remote monitoring, asset management and predictive maintenance, while providing the ability to grow and scale solutions to millions of “things.”

Being released in preview later this year, the Azure IoT Suite follows Amazon’s acquisition of IoT platform developer 2lemetry made public this week, while Google has been pursuing IoT research. As is the growing trend, startups are harnessing the rising interest in IoT while established heavyweights are beefing up their arsenal for the same.

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