On Wednesday, Microsoft announced the general availability of Azure IoT Edge, a fully managed cloud service that helps enterprises generate more useful insights from the data collected by Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

The service “delivers cloud intelligence locally by deploying and running artificial intelligence (AI), Azure services, and custom logic directly on cross-platform IoT devices,” according to the Azure website.

Azure IoT Edge was released in preview in November 2017. The generally available version includes a number of new features that will help devices act on real-time data immediately–for example, by recognizing a crack in a pipe from an aerial view, or predicting equipment failure before it happens, according to a Microsoft blog post announcing the availability.

SEE: The Power of IoT and Big Data (Tech Pro Research)

The three features launched alongside the service in general availability are:

1. Device provisioning service

By integrating Azure IoT Edge with Device Provisioning Service, devices can be provisioned in the field, without the need for an operator, the blog post noted. That means customers can securely provision tens of thousands of devices to scale up edge deployments faster.

2. Security manager

A security manager offers device hardening to original device manufacturers, based on their choice of Hardware Secure Modules (HSM).

3. Automatic device management (ADM)

An ADM service allows for scaled deployment of IoT Edge modules to a set of devices, based on device metadata.

With general availability, Azure IoT Edge is also now open sourced and available on GitHub, the company announced, to give developers more flexibility and control of their edge solutions. The service will also include support for Moby container management, which works on Docker-based systems, and an ecosystem of certified hardware and software for the edge for better device management and security.

Finally, the generally available Azure IoT Edge will include a simplified developer experience, according to the post. The service will support more programming languages than other edge offerings on the market, including C#, C, Node.js, Python, and Java, so developers have more choice in how they program edge modules. The service will also aim to simplify module development by coding, testing, debugging, and deploying from VSCode. And CI/CD pipelines with VSTS will help developers manage the complete lifecycle of the Azure IoT modules from development, testing, staging, and deployment.

The new features could help make Microsoft’s service more appealing for enterprise IoT deployments, as companies try to glean actionable insights from the massive amounts of data collected from connected devices. For pricing information, click here.

The big takeaways for tech leaders:

  • Microsoft’s Azure IoT Edge is now generally available, and aims to help businesses better collect and act on IoT data in real time.
  • Microsoft announced that Azure IoT Edge will be open sourced, will include broad language support for module SDKs, and will include improved security measures.