Why and how we standardized a Microsoft Azure architecture for IoT
As a Microsoft consultancy & service partner, we are privileged to work with different companies on enabling the potential of Internet of Things (IoT) in their advantage. But in doing so, we came to the conclusion that a lot of the development work is repetitive. So to speed up the development of IoT solutions in future projects, we decided to standardise some key software functionalities. This article will explain why and how we did it.Why standardize an Azure architecture for IoT?
In traditional projects we are often hired by companies to build data architectures for various purposes. And due to the high variety of data types present in the organisations of clients, building custom based data architectures is often the way to go. But for the various IoT projects we did in the past, we recognised that this is different.
Standardize & automate
In the last years we have gained quite some experience in building scalable IoT solutions on Azure. But during these projects we came to the conclusion that a large part of the development was actually repetitive and had the potential to be standardized and automated. Below some general activities we always work on in setting up cloud based Azure IoT architectures:
- Building IoT data connecters;
- Setting up data storage & analytics pipelines;
- User authorisation & GDPR;
- Configuring Azure architecture & services;
- Hosting web based apps & dashboards.
Faster time to value!
In doing IoT projects, automating big parts of the software development brings some major advantages. We see the following three as our favorites:
- Time saved can potentially be used for development of other solution features (i.e. data analytics / machine learning);
- Fast testing of IoT solution prototypes, shortens time to value for business;
- It keeps the developers happy because they can work on new features and improvements😀
Especially shorter time to value has been an attractive feature to our clients. It enables them to experiment more with IoT solutions at lower cost, giving them the possibility to learn fast and add more value to their businesses.
Discover here the full article and discover how did we do it.Â
