Accelerating Your IoT Journey on AWS
The Internet of Things (IoT) plays a vital role in a company’s digital transformation efforts. A key element of IoT is the massive amount of data collected and stored on the cloud, which can then be analyzed and leveraged by companies to create better end-user products, services, and experiences.
The data generated by IoT-connected devices can also lead to improved operational efficiencies and cost savings, providing a critical competitive edge for companies. But taking advantage of all this data isn’t as simple as buying some off-the-shelf solutions and plugging them in - the data needs a home and the suitable collection of tools to help you implement, manage, and analyze it. Even still, sometimes, the IoT solution you want doesn’t yet exist.
AWS Partners can help you build and implement successful solutions; however, it’s important to understand just how the services offered through AWS and its partners can massively accelerate that success.
In this post, we’ll look at some of the primary services AWS offers and how you can leverage them and accelerate your IoT success.
Key AWS IoT Services
AWS offers many services for IoT success, and this list is constantly growing and evolving. Below are some of the key IoT services.
AWS IoT Core
This is a managed service that lets you connect IoT devices to the AWS cloud so they can interact securely with other devices and cloud applications. Think of this as the messenger service that passes data back and forth over many different protocols, thus giving you the ability to effectively use and analyze that data, all without having to worry about maintaining an infrastructure to do so.
And there’s no need to worry about scale - AWS IoT core can support trillions of messages from billions of devices. As you would expect, this service also makes it easy to take advantage of the other AWS IoT Services we’re looking at.
AWS IoT Analytics
Data without analysis is effectively worthless - just capturing data does little for your business. That’s where AWS IoT Analytics comes in. IoT data is highly unstructured and can be challenging to analyze with traditional tools built for structured data. On the other hand, AWS IoT is designed to handle the data gaps, corrupted messages, and false readings typical of IoT data, giving you an automated solution for analyzing the data from potentially millions of devices.
AWS IoT Analytics lets you analyze your copious amounts of data to make meaningful business decisions that drive your organization forward.
AWS IoT Greengrass
You can use AWS IoT Greengrass to build, deploy, and manage device software for your IoT applications. This lets you program your devices to act locally, based automatically on the data they generate. For example, you could use machine learning and predictive models to determine when a piece of equipment may need servicing and automatically send an alert to prevent a major shutdown. By acting locally, devices can quickly respond to local events while still allowing you to upload relevant data to the cloud for analysis.
AWS IoT Greengrass is designed to accelerate your development time and provide you with a mechanism to remotely update and manage your devices across their life cycles through software rather than firmware. This model allows your devices to become smarter over time.
Amazon FreeRTOS
AWS IoT Services are all about making your IoT devices and infrastructure better, faster, and easier to create and manage. With Amazon FreeRTOS, you get an open-source microcontroller operating system that can be integrated into small, low-power edge IoT devices, making the devices easier to program, deploy, secure, and manage.
These small devices can benefit greatly from connecting to the cloud or locally to other devices but generally lack computing power and memory capacity, only performing simple tasks. Amazon FreeRTOS provides the kernel for running these low-power devices and software libraries that let you connect to other services such as AWS IoT Greengrass and AWS IoT Core.
AWS IoT Events
An important aspect of IoT is monitoring your devices and applications and then responding to events that occur. AWS IoT Events lets you easily track and react to events across thousands of sensors as necessary, eliminating the need to develop a custom solution.
IoT Solutions
As mentioned, IoT is all about the data - collecting, storing, analyzing, and using it to accelerate your business success. To ensure a successful implementation and for ongoing success, there are several key areas to target, and then use the above AWS IoT Services as applicable:
Devices and Sensors: Ensure your devices and sensors can act both locally and upload data into the cloud for ongoing analysis.
Connectivity and Infrastructure: Every device needs some kind of connectivity, usually wireless, so your infrastructure needs to support this and allow for connectivity in even the most remote spots.
Applications: Applications are necessary when users or customers need to interact with the data somehow, such as through a web app, portal, or dashboard. These can greatly increase the scope and complexity of an IoT solution.
Analytics and Insights: You’ll collect a lot of data and you need to make the data work for you through analysis, and then insights gleaned from that analysis.
Change Management: With any digital transformation project comes change, and your internal users will have varying levels of anxiety around those changes. Make sure you have an effective Change Management plan in place to deal with the human element of your project.
Conclusion
AWS IoT Services like the ones listed above can greatly accelerate your success in an IoT implementation project. Amazon has been doing this for a long time and they’ve developed an extensive suite of tools and services that can help your business. One of the most important elements is that these have all been developed to integrate with each other, eliminating integration costs and headaches.
However, it’s important to note that not all companies will have the necessary resources in-house with the AWS experience needed for success, and it’s critical to recognize that. Luckily, Amazon’s Partner program can connect you to the right consulting and technology companies for help. And when you combine the Amazon Partner Program and the AWS IoT Services, you get an incredible recipe for accelerated project success.