The all new Microsoft Azure IoT Edge brings down the power and capabilities of Azure IoT down to run natively on individual Internet of Things devices. This will enable scenarios that require much lower latencies to be built with real-time analytics and intelligence on running on the IoT devices (at the edge). Also, the devices supported include a broad range of IoT hardware which includes much more than just Raspberry Pi with the inclusion of lower powered devices as well.

Azure IoT Edge enabled you to build Hybrid IoT Solutions the bridge the gap and merge the Cloud IoT and local, device IoT capabilities into a single cohesive mesh. This allows you to easily orchestrate IoT cloud services in Azure to run on your IoT devices at the edge. This allows you to get the best of both Cloud and On-Premises worlds in your IoT solutions providing intelligence and analysis on the edge closer to your devices with up to 20x reduction in decision latency!

Here are some of the benefits and advantages of using Azure IoT Edge:

• Run artificial intelligence at the edge
• Perform edge analytics
• Deploy IoT solutions from cloud to edge
• Manage devices centrally from the cloud
• Operate with offline and intermittent connectivity
• Enable real-time decisions
• Connect new and legacy devices
• Reduce bandwidth costs

The Azure IoT Edge was just announced today at Build 2017, and promises to be a truly great advancement in building IoT solutions. Microsoft even showed a really great demonstration of implementing it in Industrial IoT that resulted in 20x reduction in decision latency and emergency response in a factory.

Azure IoT Edge looks really awesome, and I look forward to learning more about it!

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