Microsoft and Cisco are continuing to get closer as partnership. This week, the two companies announced a strengthening of their collaboration. Specifically, a new “seamless integration” of Microsoft’s and Cisco’s Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud products.
According to a Microsoft blog post, the integration will allow customers to access more edge computing solutions. Tony Shakib, IoT business acceleration leader for Microsoft Azure, says the partnership will further adoption of edge computing across customers.
“By enabling Azure IoT with Cisco IoT network devices infrastructure, IT, and operations teams can quickly take advantage of a wide variety of hardware and easily scalable telemetry collection from connected assets, to kickstart their Azure IoT application development,” Shakib wrote.
“Our customers can now augment their existing Cisco networks with Azure IoT ready gateways across multiple industries and use cases, without compromising the ability to implement data control and security that both Microsoft and Cisco are known for.”
Integration
Cisco will use its newly launched Edge Intelligence software to tap directly into Microsoft’s Azure IoT Hub and Device Positioning Service. Combined, the two solutions will provide more edge computing tools to users.
Edge Intelligence is a solution that can extract and change data to be used on the cloud to promote data sharing. Azure IoT Hub launched to the public in 2016. The Hub is a communications platform that connects billions of IoT devices on the cloud. It uses a messaging infrastructure that communicates with Azure through IoT protocols like HTTPS, MQTT and AMPQPS.
“Cisco and Microsoft are happy to help our customers realize the value of their IoT projects faster than ever before. Our early field customer, voestalpine, is benefiting from this integration as they digitize their operations to improve production planning and operational efficiencies.”—Vikas Butaney, Cisco IoT VP of Product Management.
