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AWS Internet of Things Platform Hits General Availability
Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) formally threw its hat into the Internet of Things (IoT) arena on Friday with the official launch of AWS IoT.
First announced as a beta release during October's re:Invent conference, the AWS IoT platform aims to give developers a pathway to connecting devices to the cloud and to building, deploying and managing IoT apps. The platform can "support billions of devices and trillions of messages, and can process and route those messages to AWS endpoints and to other devices reliably and securely," according to AWS.
There are four main prongs in the AWS IoT platform:
- The Device Gateway gives developers a way to connect their devices to the cloud and begin transmitting data to mobile apps or other devices. Devices can transmit or receive messages using HTTP or MQTT, as well as other standard protocols, and the messages can be either one-to-one or one-to-many.
- The Rules Engine enables developers to quickly act on data from their devices. The feature "evaluates inbound messages published into AWS IoT and transforms and delivers them to another device or a cloud service, based on business rules you define," according to the company.
- The Device Registry lets developers track each cloud-connected device using metadata.
- The Device Shadows feature preserves a device's "latest state" so applications can continue to interact with it even when it's offline.
[Click on image for larger view.] The structure of the AWS IoT platform. (Source: AWS)
In addition, the release includes a device SDK and promises "mutual authentication and encryption at all points of connection."
Currently, AWS IoT is available out of the U.S. East, U.S. West, EU and Asia Pacific regions. Pricing is based according to the number of messages that are published and delivered, with one message equaling a 512-byte block of data. For the U.S. and EU regions, the cost is $5 per million messages; in the Asia Pacific, $8 per million messages.
There is also a free tier that is capped at 250,000 messages per month for 12 months.