In May, we announced a major update to our Azure IoT Remote Monitoring solution accelerator. This included key functionality such as enhanced operator scenarios through the configuration of rules, easier device connectivity, and richer integration options with tools such as Power BI and Azure Data Lake. Over the past few months we have continued to improve the scenarios by adding features like integration of Time Series Insights to allow for root cause analysis, or roles-based access control through AAD.
Today, we are excited to announce another wave of functionality that will continue accelerating companies towards achieving their scenarios faster.
Manage and deploy Azure IoT Edge components from Azure IoT Remote Monitoring
Real-time data analytics and insights drive business value in IoT solutions, but not all customer scenarios can rely on cloud processing. Azure IoT Edge solves these challenges by delivering cloud intelligence locally on IoT devices. Azure IoT Edge is now seamlessly integrated with the Azure IoT Remote Monitoring solution accelerator. Customers can leverage this feature to reduce bandwidth costs by processing data locally or achieving near real-time actions by using AI at the edge. For operators, the user interface in Azure IoT Remote Monitoring allows customers to add edge devices, as well as create and deploy edge manifest.
Imagine Contoso is remotely monitoring an oil pump jack using Azure IoT Edge. Contoso can process telemetry data at the edge and then send aggregated dataset to the Azure IoT Remote Monitoring solution accelerator in the cloud. Using anomaly detection in Azure IoT Edge, Contoso operators can quickly act on unusual telemetry without relying on the cloud processing. You can learn more about this scenario in the tutorial, “Detect anomalies at the edge with the Remote Monitoring solution accelerator.”
Automatic device management to further enhance operators’ capabilities
Managing devices at scale can be costly and time consuming. Tasks like updating an asset with the latest firmware or implementing a security patch at scale are often complex and require careful planning, with downtime planning in customer facilities. Azure IoT automatic device management helps facilitate the process by allowing operators to target a set of devices, define the changes to be applied, and then choreograph the changes as devices become available. It also automatically handles reporting and conflict resolution, which greatly reduces the possibility of human error.
With the integration of automatic device management into Azure IoT Remote Monitoring, Contoso operators can create, deploy, and manage automatic device configurations, ensuring that their devices always have the correct set of properties. For a walkthrough example of how to use this, you can follow our tutorial on implementing a firmware update for an MX Chip.
Perform actions to deliver even greater value
IoT operators rely on device telemetry analytics to understand the status of their projects. Beyond insights, it is also important to perform automated actions after an alert has been triggered, so immediate remediation can happen when the alert is produced.
The Azure IoT Remote Monitoring solution accelerator now supports the ability to add actions to your rules that get triggered during an alarm. For example, adding an email action to a rule helps to ensure that you will never miss an alert again. Actions can be added to existing rules defined in your solution, or while creating a new rule. This ability to acting on device alerts within Azure IoT Remote Monitoring is is possible through the integration of Azure Logic Apps, which has a rich set of extension points available for developers. This allows customization into other scenarios such as sending text messages, triggering business processes to services such as Dynamics 365, or calling a webservice API endpoint. Learn more about how to customize your actions in Azure IoT Remote Monitoring.
Learn more
These capabilities are available today. Here are some great resources to get started:
- Provision the solution at https://www.azureiotsolutions.com/.
- Learn more about Edge in Azure IoT Remote Monitoring.
- Learn more about Actions in Azure IoT Remote Monitoring.
- Learn more about Automatic Device Management in Azure IoT Remote Monitoring.
