IoT Evolution Expo 2023 (held in Fort Lauderdale, FL) brought together some of the heaviest hitters in the Internet of Things space to declare where their firms’ project capabilities stand today.
Microsoft is certainly part of the race for IoT dominance among suppliers. So, in a presentation titled "Well-Architected IoT Solutions: Pattern for Edge-to-Cloud Innovation," Eumar Dias de Assis, Managing Technical Director for IoT Solutions at Microsoft, laid out how the company sees things in IoT.
Moderator Tiffani Neilson, Chief Marketing Officer at IoT Marketing, introduced her guest and stepped back to enjoy the fast-paced half-hour presentation.
"You can expect more than 80 billion things will be connected by 2025," Assis stated. He said 80% of companies imagine using IoT technology in the future, which translates to more than $30 billion’s worth of new monetization for technology companies.
“In today's world of IoT, the intelligent cloud supports the intelligent edge to establish a digital feedback loop,” Assis said. According to the slideshow that he worked through rapidly, the digital feedback loop endeavors to engage customers, empower employees, optimize operations, and transform products.
"Everything started from the cloud because you have unlimited computing power there," Assis said. Progression toward an all-encompassing metaverse network, in his eyes, involves:
- Cloud
- IoT
- Edge
- AI
- Digital Twins
Moreover, a company’s network design determines whether their edge-processing devices can deliver the performance a system requires. "You need to think about how you connect with your devices," Assis continued. The most important IoT network design concerns include:
- Heterogeneity
- Security
- Scalability
- Flexibility
- Sourceability
- Connectability
"The intelligent cloud supports the intelligent edge," Assis said. ML scripts built in the cloud are containerized and pushed to the edge. According to Assis, the eight attributes of a successful IoT solution include scale, device management, big data management, analytics and insight, availability and disaster recovery, security and compliance, DevOps and ML, and TCO.
And once you get to the edge, as many believe, it’s a brand new game. "Running AI workloads at the edge is a discipline of its own," Assis confirmed. “The key considerations for obtaining optimum performance from your edge devices are range of communications, length of battery life, and the rate of device data transmission.”
While the process sounds complicated, the goal is to make the network as simple as possible. "It does not need to be something sophisticated," he said. "Sometimes it just needs to be functional." Items that fall within his IoT Capability Blueprint include:
- Device options
- Software development
- Solution lifecycle management
- Device security
- Cloud connections
- Advanced, at-the-edge cloud workloads
Assis also addressed the security concerns inherent in operating an IoT service. With all the devices that are attached, implementing layered security measures is your best bet, he said. "It's what keeps everybody up at night. People can use your devices to perform attacks. The right securities are quintessential."
As an Microsoft technician, he builds on the Azure platform. "Azure has some concepts of Zero Trust embedded within it," he said in closing. Assis told the audience that Microsoft Azure also provides help with design, assessments, advice, documentation, support services, and reference architecture.
Edited by
Alex Passett
