MWC 2019: Azure IoT customers, partners accelerate innovation from cloud to edge

The Internet of Things (IoT) has expanded the world of computing far beyond mobile and PC, bringing a new and ever-growing class of cloud-connected devices that is on track to reach 20 billion devices by 2020. This year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) programming reflects this profound shift, where IoT is transforming industries from agriculture to retail, leveraging emerging technologies including AI, Mixed Reality, edge computing, 5G, and more to not only accelerate business but to also address societal issues like improving our global food supply, reducing energy use, and waste.

IoT unlocks the power of the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge, enabling businesses to take informed actions based on real-time insights from any physical part of their business. Customers including Chevron, Volkswagen, Kohler, CBRE, Thyssenkrupp, and more are embracing IoT as critical to their technology portfolio and using it to optimize business processes, create new connected experiences, and manage digital and physical assets at scale.

Today, Microsoft made a series of announcements for new devices and cloud services that will further increase the strategic value of IoT. Microsoft boasts one of the fastest growing IoT partner ecosystems in the market, with 10,000 IoT partners developing intelligent edge to intelligent cloud and 1,500 IoT solutions built by partners.

Through this partner and solution ecosystem, we can jointly serve customers in their mission to find business value from IoT, no matter what their industry or solution needs are.

Announcing new IoT partnerships for global-scale IoT solutions

This week, we are announcing new partnerships to enable global-scale IoT solutions with SAP, Inmarsat, and myDevices.

SAP Leonardo IoT and Azure IoT integration: Today at MWC, we are announcing new integrations between SAP Leonardo IoT and Azure IoT to deliver a complete solution for customers that simplifies the collection and ingestion of data and streams it into familiar business applications that can act on it, such as SAP S/4HANA. The SAP Leonardo IoT will leverage Azure IoT services, including Azure IoT Hub and Azure IoT Edge, to provide access to market leading secure connectivity, powerful Device Management functionality and a global scale data ingestion engine. This joint solution will enable SAP Leonardo IoT to fully manage the physical assets in a secure manner while streaming the data they produce to SAP’s portfolio of fully integrated business applications used by many of the world’s largest companies, ultimately creating improved customer experiences.

We are also adding enterprise-grade capabilities to the edge. Customers can now run SAP Leonardo IoT Edge Business Essential Functions on the highly secure Azure IoT Edge platform deployed on enterprise-ready certified devices. This will enable customers to seamlessly extend their SAP enterprise business processes to the edge, reducing their dependency on latency, bandwidth or connectivity, while creating immersive business experiences that are highly responsive and contextually aware.

Inmarsat and Microsoft collaborate to bring cloud-powered industrial IoT to global supply chain: Inmarsat, a world leader in global, mobile satellite communications services, is collaborating with Microsoft to enable its customers to transfer data collected by their Industrial IoT solutions to the Microsoft Azure IoT Central platform. Azure customers will also be able to access Inmarsat’s global, highly reliable and secure satellite communications network, enabling them to connect their IoT infrastructure to cloud-based applications. The collaboration will initially focus on the delivery of Industrial IoT-based solutions to the agriculture, mining, transportation, and logistics sectors. Customers will gain access to a variety of tools that will help connect anything to anything, bringing together assets in the physical world with applications in the digital world, no matter how remote the location with the power of the intelligent edge.

myDevices to connect LoRaWAN Sensors to Microsoft Azure: myDevices, which designs solutions to help enterprises to quickly design, prototype, and commercialize IoT solutions, today announced a powerful collaboration with Microsoft that empowers users to onboard hundreds of LoRaWAN devices to instantly send data directly to Microsoft Azure. myDevices has amassed one of the most extensive known catalogs of pre-configured LoRaWAN sensors and gateways consisting of nearly 200 different devices from over 50 hardware manufacturers from around the world. The devices range from standard indoor temperature sensors to industrial strength tank monitoring devices and everything in between. All of the sensors and gateways include a scannable QR code that is used with the myDevices’ IoT in a Box mobile application. Scanning the QR code with the app connects the device, decodes the payload, normalizes the data for interoperability, and provides the user with features such as sensor activity logs, time-series visualization charts, sensor maps, customizable alerts, corrective action reports, permission-based user management, white label deployments, and more.

Azure IoT partners and customer solution demos

At MWC we have several partners showcasing Azure IoT solutions in our booth across industries ranging from manufacturing and healthcare to real estate and retail:

• CBRE, the world’s largest commercial real estate services and investment firm, will be demonstrating CBRE Host. The Host mission is to increase individual well-being, personal productivity and organizational effectiveness through people-led, technology-enabled services. CBRE Host uses Azure Digital Twins to model its workplaces and derive insights about how space is being used.
• Cradlepoint, the global leader in cloud-delivered LTE and 5G wireless network edge solutions, is partnering with Microsoft to create an integrated solution powered by Azure IoT Central that will make it faster and easier for enterprises to create distributed enterprise IoT solutions. Cradlepoint makes is simple to securely connect, manage, and monitor thousands of IoT devices using a combination of LTE-as-a-WAN and real-time cloud-based management.
• qiio and Feldschlösschen Breweries, a subsidiary of the Carlsberg Group, will be showcasing an Azure-enabled beer brewer that sends device utilization, health, and performance data to the cloud via the end-to-end IoT solution of qiio. Azure Sphere securely connects the brewer, protecting the device from security breaches, giving Feldschlösschen a peace of mind and useful insights around their operations.
• Sensoria Health with partner Optima Molliter are solving for health needs with smart aging digital solutions, such as the first smart diabetic footwear product, MOTUS Smart powered by Sensoria, that monitors patient compliance to a clinician’s prescribed mechanical offloading protocol to help reduce the risk of amputations.
• Toyota Material Handling Europe created new and evolved “lean” processes that leverage AI to help service technicians optimize tasks and lower inefficiencies. Toyota is showcasing an autonomous pallet drone that identifies safety hazards with AI-enabled cameras and processes the data at the edge with Azure IoT Edge to cut down latency and response times.

If you’re at MWC, make sure to stop by our booth 3N30 in Hall 3 to see the demos in person and learn more about the Azure IoT platform.

Source: IoT