Microsoft has announced the public preview of Microsoft IoT Central, a completely managed IoT SaaS solution that simplifies IoT deployment with low-code approach involving minimal software coding.
IoT Central aims to bridge the gap between physical and digital worlds by breaking the barriers to building Internet of Things (IoT) solutions in a hassle-free way. It will make it easy to connect, monitor and manage IoT systems at scale.
Microsoft said that IoT Central will remove the initial setup complexities and management problems. It will enable developers to build enterprise-grade IoT apps just in a few hours, without managing the backend infrastructure.
IoT Central includes an Application Builder, a low-code environment, which allows developers to create devices directly on cloud. Microsoft IoT Central Application Builder also enables users to define device attributes and visualization through easy drag and drop library of tools.
The applications built using Application Builder can be examined before connecting a real device, using the simulation service in IoT Central. There are device templates, versioned for supporting DevOps, to make it easy for provisioning device identities at scale.
For better security, IoT Central leverages the IoT privacy features like role-based access and integration with Azure Active Directory permissions.
Azure IoT device software-defined keys (SDKs) are supported for several programming languages including Node.js, C/C#, and Java.
Microsoft IoT Central is highly scalable and can support millions of connected devices, and by millions of events per second via its cloud gateway.
Also read: Azure Location Based Services now available for preview
Microsoft said that IoT Central will not only integrate with its own services like Office 365 and Dynamics 365, but also with the third-party services from SAP, Salesforce, and more vendors in the coming months.
Microsoft IoT Central, announced in April this year, is now available in preview, and will be generally available sometime next year.
