Azure IoT solutions
Azure IoT has a collection of solutions that allow an organization to take actions based on valuable insights that have been captured from data that’s been received from connected devices. These solutions can help address the most common IoT challenges of cost, complexity, and security.
The Azure IoT technology portfolio allows computational sensor devices (things) to send recorded values (transmit telemetry) to the Azure computing platform for processing. This is where actions can be taken on data that’s been received and visualizations that have been presented; a device may also be set to receive desired values to adjust its settings so that they’re in line with the received values. The following diagram shows an Azure IoT reference architecture:

Figure 5.10 – Azure IoT reference architecture
The preceding reference architecture is made up of the following components:
- Devices: These register with the Azure IoT platform and send telemetry data. These devices, in some scenarios, might send data locally to an edge gateway device; an edge device performs some local processing optimizations.
- Cloud gateway: The cloud gateway reads the ingested data (received) securely and provides device management capabilities.
- Stream processors: These consume the telemetry data that’s sent by the gateway. They integrate with the business processes and will take action based on the insights; they place data into storage.
- Visualization interface: Users will interact with this interface to visualize the data; it provides easy device management.
We will look at the following three core components of the Azure IoT services portfolio for the exam objectives:
- Azure IoT Central: Consume IoT services.
- Azure IoT Hub: Build your own IoT services.
- Azure Sphere: Secure IoT services.
This section introduced various Azure IoT solutions. In the next section, we will look at Azure IoT Central.
Azure IoT Central
Azure IoT Central is a SaaS fully managed IoT app platform. It allows you to rapidly adopt IoT solutions through its ease to connect to data for valuable insights and operate and manage IoT devices at scale.
Choosing to use IoT Central as your core IoT service will be appropriate when you need to quickly build IoT applications through a fully managed IoT solution offering. Here, you can align with the following:
- Management: You need a fully managed IoT application platform that will handle scale, security, and management so that you don’t have to. You can think of this as IoT-as-a-Service.
- Control: You wish to control user admin customizations and your telemetry data (management and data plane), but you do not wish to have the overhead of managing the underlying IoT system and how it’s managed.
- Pricing: You need a simple and predictable pricing structure.
This section looked at IoT Central. In the next section, we will look at Azure IoT Hub.
Azure IoT Hub
Azure IoT Hub is a PaaS cloud-hosted Azure solution that provides a managed connectivity service. You can use this to build a network to connect and collect insights from virtually any number of sensor-fitted devices at a massive scale (one million devices per hub). It also allows developers to build customized device monitoring and management solutions. It acts as a bi-directional communication channel and message hub between the devices and the IoT applications. Azure IoT Hub can integrate with Azure Logic Apps, Azure Machine Learning, and Azure Stream Analytics.
Choosing to use IoT Hub as your core service will be appropriate when you need an IoT solution offering that can provide a building block approach to building customized and complex IoT scenarios. It aligns with the following:
- Management: You need full control of the underlying IoT systems and services that make up the solution. This includes being in control of scaling to meet needs and connecting devices to the solution, managing updates and settings on the devices, and providing end-to-end security.
- Control: You require total customization for all the aspects of the solution architecture.
- Pricing: You wish to be able to control costs by optimizing your services.
This section looked at IoT Hub. In the next section, we will look, at Azure Sphere.
Azure Sphere
Azure Sphere is an end-to-end IoT security solution where the security of telemetry data and communications is critical.
There are three components to Azure Sphere:
- Hardware: This is the Azure Sphere microcontroller unit (MCU), which hosts the OS and receives the sensor data.
- OS: This is a customized Linux OS and runs the security service.
- Security Service: This ensures that the device has not been compromised. The device must always authenticate before sending data. The security service checks that the device has not been tampered with before providing a secure communication channel that can push any updates to the device. Once Azure Sphere has validated the device and ensured any updates are available, it allows the device to send data and receive instructions for the settings that need to be updated.
An example would be in the case of financial scenarios such as ATM devices; it encompasses the device’s hardware, OS, and the secure communication channel to send data and push updates where security patching is required.
This section looked at Azure Sphere. In the next section, we will look at big data and analytics solutions.