Microsoft and the Internet of Things

With the release of Windows 10, Microsoft has not only a strong focus on Business and Consumer end users, it also has a strong focus on Internet of Things (IoT) solutions. Microsoft announced different editions of Windows 10, one of the is called Windows 10 IoT Core and there are also more Windows 10 IoT editions.

But first what is the Internet of Things. Well you can look at it this way, today and in the past the Internet was designed and used by people, to connected people to each other – The Internet of People if you will. But you can think that you can even connected devices to each other, for example your car, your fitness band, your home and a lot of other things.

If you think about how technology can make our life easier, you will see a lot of opportunities for the Internet of Things. IoT can be used for simple things like if you come home, the system automatically detects your car and turns on the lights in your house, starts to play music and so on… But it can also help you in much bigger scenarios where a health sensor detects that you are having problems and automatically calls the ambulance. You see there are a lot of different scenarios which can help you make your life easier.

As you can see, this looks like a huge business.

• 28 Billion Internet connected “things” by 2020*
• $20 Billion opportunity for Wearables by 2017*
• $12 Billion opportunity for Smart Home by 2017*

*Source: IDC, Goldman Sachs

Think about what is possible for you or your business, for example you can connected your home automation with other devices. And if you think what you can do by connecting and using cloud services such as Microsoft Azure you will have limitless opportunities.

Microsoft Azure IoT Services:

Microsoft offers a Microsoft Azure IoT Suite which will help you connect devices to the cloud and use services from the cloud. If you want to know more about the possibilities with Windows IoT and Microsoft Azure you can check out the videos on Channel9.

In the next blog posts I will show you how you can use Windows 10 IoT Core together with Azure.