Last week, Microsoft held its Ignite conference in Orlando, Florida, US, in order to reveal its latest updates that include a set of new Internet of Things-focused updates to its Azure cloud computing platform, aiming to completely benefit from data generated by IoT devices in enhancing its cloud computing services like Azure. Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing service created by Microsoft for building, testing, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed data centers. Within this conference, Microsoft announced a set of new updates and tools that are launched to enhance users’ experience when they are using Microsoft’s services and products. One of those announcements is that Microsoft made “Azure IoT Central” available generally. Azure IoT Central is considered to be the Microsoft’s solution, that enables users to get started with IoT. Additionally, Microsoft points out that they are working on some new updates to Microsoft’s IoT provisioning service, IoT hub message routing tools, and Map Control API. Alongside these previous updates to Microsoft Azure, Microsoft also highlighted the launch of “Azure Digital Twins”, a new service that helps enterprises create their own digital models of any physical environment. Azure Digital Twins will help developers to identify all the devices they have deployed, in addition to letting them run advanced analytics and test scenarios as needed without having to make changes to the actual physical deployment.

As explained by the Microsoft company,

“As the world enters the next wave of innovation in IoT where the connected objects such as buildings, equipment or factory floors need to be understood in the context of their environments, Azure Digital Twins provides a complete picture of the relationships and processes that connect people, places and devices,”

Microsoft also mentions that Azure Digital Twins will be launched into preview on October 15.

Coming to the other major announcement, Microsoft announced in its conference that the” Azure Sphere” is now in public preview, with development kits shipping to developers. Azure Sphere is a Linux-based operating system created by Microsoft for the Internet of Things applications. It is the first time Microsoft has publicly released an operating system running the Linux kernel and the second Unix-like operating system the company developed after Xenix. It also aims to provide a set of cloud-based security. In the same context, Microsoft ushers to some updates that will come to its Azure IoT Edge, including the ability to submit third-party IoT Edge modules for certification and inclusion in the Azure Marketplace. As reported by TechCrunch; “It’s also about to launch the public preview of IoT Edge extended offline for those kinds of use cases where an IoT device goes offline for — you guessed it — and extended period.” Azure IoT Edge is a fully managed service that delivers cloud intelligence locally by deploying and running artificial intelligence (AI), Azure services, and custom logic directly on cross-platform IoT devices. Run your IoT solution securely and at scale—whether in the cloud or offline.