Google Cloud launched a new Internet of Things management service today called Google Cloud IoT Core that provides a way for companies to manage IoT devices and process data being generated by those devices.
It works with Google’s software services like Google Cloud Dataflow, Google BigQuery, andGoogle Cloud Machine Learning Engine. Customers can work with third-party partners like ARM, Intel and Sierra Wireless for their IoT hardware.
AWS and Microsoft have similar services tapping into a fast-growing IoT market.
IoT cloud competition is going strong now.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Maps and Particle partner to bring location-aware capabilities to IoT devices
https://maps-apis.googleblog.com/2017/05/google-maps-and-particle-partner-to.html?m=1
Particle and Google Maps make it easy for IoT devices to identify their location without the use of a GPS. With a single line of code, a device or sensor dispersed across a network (an IoT edge device) can access Google’s geospatial database of Wi-Fi and cellular networks using the Google Maps Geolocation API.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Larry Dignan / ZDNet:
Google launches Google Cloud IoT core, a managed service for IoT device deployments
Google Cloud IoT Core lands NXP support, guns for smart city use
http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-cloud-iot-core-lands-nxp-support-guns-for-smart-city-use/
Google Cloud IoT Core bundles a series of technologies into a managed service for smart city deployments. NXP, which has chips in the field in many smart cities, is on board.
Google launched its Google Cloud IoT core, a managed service for smart city deployments, and NXP Semiconductor said it will support it in its Android Things platform.
The pairing of NXP and Google Cloud Platform to target smart city deployments rhymes with what the two companies are doing with smart home devices. The goal is to embed Android Things everywhere.
The gist is that NXP and Google Cloud Platform want to manage city devices to adjust traffic lights based on patterns and monitored various vitals while scaling various technologies like machine learning, Tensorflow, and IoT management.
NXP’s Android Things platform includes an i.MX applications processor, developer tools, and certified Android Things hardware.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google’s new IoT core service helps businesses manage their IoT data and devices
https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/16/google-launches-cloud-service-to-manage-internet-of-things-data/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook
Google Cloud IoT Core is supposed to help deal with all of that by removing a level of complexity associated with managing all of these devices and data. By packaging this as a service, Google is trying to do a lot of the heavy lifting for customers, providing them with the infrastructure and services they need to manage the data, using Google’s software services like Google Cloud Dataflow, Google BigQuery, and Google Cloud Machine Learning Engine. Customers can work with third-party partners like ARM, Intel and Sierra Wireless for their IoT hardware and Helium, Losant or Tellmeplus for building their applications.
While the company bills itself as the more open alternative to competitors like AWS and Microsoft Azure, this IoT service is consistent with Google’s overall strategy to let customers use both its core cloud services and whatever other services they choose to bring to the process, whether they are from Google itself or from a third party.
The solution consists of two main pieces. First there is a device manager for registering each of the “things” from which you will be collecting data. This can be done manually through a console or programmatically to register the devices
The second piece is a “protocol bridge,” which provides a way to communicate using standard protocols between the “things” and the Google Cloud service. It includes native support for secure connection over MQTT, an industry-standard IoT protocol, according to the company.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Introducing Google Cloud IoT Core: for securely connecting and managing IoT devices at scale
https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/05/introducing-Google-Cloud-IoT-Core-for-securely-connecting-and-managing-IoT-devices-at-scale.html
Today we’re announcing a new fully-managed Google Cloud Platform (GCP) service called Google Cloud IoT Core. Cloud IoT Core makes it easy for you to securely connect your globally distributed devices to GCP, centrally manage them and build rich applications by integrating with our data analytics services.
Cloud IoT Core is currently available as a private beta, and we’re launching with these hardware and software partners:
Cloud IoT Device Partners
Actions Semiconductor
Allwinner Technology
ARM
Marvell
Microchip
Intel
Mongoose OS
NXP
Realtek
Sierra Wireless
SOTEC
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft simplifies IoT further
https://blogs.microsoft.com/iot/2017/04/20/microsoft-simplifies-iot-further/
The Internet of Things (IoT) is quickly becoming a critical aspect of doing business. In the same way that web, mobile and cloud technologies have powered digital transformation, IoT is the next big catalyst.
Yet while IoT brings a new set of benefits for companies that want to keep an edge on their competition, it brings challenges too — IoT solutions can still be complex, and a shortage of skills makes it difficult for everyone to take advantage of this new innovation. To help solve those challenges and simplify IoT, Microsoft is announcing some new technologies and solutions this week.
Announcing Microsoft IoT Central, a new SaaS solution to simplify IoT
Today, Microsoft is announcing Microsoft IoT Central, a new software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering that reduces the complexity of IoT solutions. Microsoft IoT Central is a fully managed SaaS offering for customers and partners that enables powerful IoT scenarios without requiring cloud solution expertise.
Built on the Azure cloud, Microsoft IoT Central simplifies the development process and makes it easy and fast for customers to get started, making digital transformation more accessible to everyone.
Announcing Microsoft IoT Central
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/internet-of-things/iot-central-saas-solutions
Tomi Engdahl says:
AWS IoT for home automation
http://www.epanorama.net/newepa/2016/01/24/aws-iot-for-home-automation/
AWS Greengrass – same code in cloud and IoT
http://www.epanorama.net/newepa/2016/12/17/aws-greengrass-same-code-in-cloud-and-iot/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Introducing Google Cloud IoT Core: for securely connecting and managing IoT devices at scale
https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/05/introducing-Google-Cloud-IoT-Core-for-securely-connecting-and-managing-IoT-devices-at-scale.html
When used as part of a broader Google Cloud IoT solution, Cloud IoT Core gives you access to new operational insights that can help your business react to, and optimize for, change in real time. This advantage has value across multiple industries; for example:
Utilities can monitor, analyze and predict consumer energy usage in real time
Transportation and logistics firms can proactively stage the right vehicles/vessels/aircraft in the right places at the right times
Oil and gas and manufacturing companies can enable intelligent scheduling of equipment maintenance to maximize production and minimize downtime
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Google Cloud IoT Core service went into public beta this week. It is a fully managed service hosted on the Google Cloud Platform. The service can be integrated with Google Cloud Dataflow, Google BigQuery, and other online Google analytics services.
Source: https://semiengineering.com/the-week-in-review-iot-65/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google to acquire Xively IoT platform from LogMeIn for $50M
https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/15/google-to-acquire-xively-iot-platform-from-logmein/
Google announced today that it intends to buy Xively from LogMeIn for $50 million, giving Google Cloud an established IoT platform to add to their product portfolio.
In a blog post announcing the acquisition, Google indicated it wants to use this purchase as a springboard into the growing IoT market, which it believes will reach 20 billion connected things by 2020. With Xively they are getting a tool that enables device designers to build connectivity directly into the design process while providing a cloud-mobile connection between the end user app and the connected thing, whatever that happens to be.
“This acquisition, subject to closing conditions, will complement Google Cloud’s effort to provide a fully managed IoT service that easily and securely connects, manages and ingests data from globally dispersed devices,” Antony Passemard from Google wrote in the blog post.
https://blog.logmeininc.com/logmein-announces-intent-sell-xively-business-google/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google spends $50 million to buy a division of LogMeIn that lets companies manage smart devices
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/15/google-buys-xively-for-50-million.html
Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene foreshadowed the deal earlier this week when she talked about the importance of the internet of things at Goldman Sachs’ technology and internet conference earlier this week.
LogMeIn originally acquired Xively in 2014 for $12 million.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://cloud.google.com/solutions/iot/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why (and How) we Left App Engine After it Almost Destroyed Us
https://hackernoon.com/why-and-how-we-left-app-engine-after-it-almost-destroyed-us-40ac2fc0b1a8
To simplify our initial launch and to scale properly we chose App Engine. As we’re Java guys this made a lot of sense. The main goal for picking PaaS over IaaS is simplicity. We saw it as a shortcut so we can focus on our mobile platform and not on managing servers.
For the first couple of years things worked fine, we had some issues to be sure e.g. a bug in the Eclipse plugin
On March 2015 our monthly “data read ops” suddenly jumped from $70 spend to 4 digits. Being a busy startup we didn’t notice it until the bill arrived and we were already on the April bill!
The thing is we didn’t change anything, or at least didn’t notice any change as we were pretty busy during that time. To this day I have no idea what went wrong but I’m getting ahead of myself…
The “App Engine Datastore Read Ops” billing line item is pretty opaque, it effectively means we read from the datastore too often. Google recommends using memcache for frequent data access which we did but “somewhere” memcache didn’t work. The problem is that this is a needle in a haystack!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Simplifies Connection to Cloud IoT Core
https://blog.paessler.com/google-simplifies-connection-to-cloud-iot-core
A few weeks ago Google released an updated preview version of the Google Cloud IoT Device SDK for Embedded C at GitHub. The open source C library allows developers to better connect even the simplest IoT devices to Google Cloud IoT Core.