AWS: Internet of Things (IoT) Portfolio Review

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a leading company in the Internet of Things (IoT) market due in part to its well-entrenched position in the cloud computing space.

With just over 50,000 employees, Seattle-based AWS provides IoT solutions for organizations worldwide.

See below for a review of AWS’ presence in the Internet of Things market:

See more: The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) Market

AWS IoT Portfolio

AWS FreeRTOS

FreeRTOS is a real-time, open-source operating system for microcontrollers. It makes low-power edge devices easier to program, deploy, secure, connect, and manage.

• Open source and community-backed
• The most trusted kernel standard for microcontrollers
• Supports over 40 different architectures
• Accelerates time for product-to-market

AWS IoT Greengrass

IoT Greengrass is an open-source edge runtime and cloud service by AWS. It allows you to build, deploy, and manage lightweight device software.

• Deliver rich insights at a lower cost
• Cloud processing and logic made local
• Deploy and manage device software and configurations remotely
• Faster builds with pre-built modular components

Greengrass aims to simplify IoT fleet control and process incoming data locally.

AWS IoT Core

IoT Core is a managed cloud platform that can support billions of devices at a time. It lets connected devices interact with cloud applications and with each other.

• Mutual authentication and end-to-end encryption between connected devices
• Instant data filtering and transforming, defined by business rules
• Connect, manage, and scale IoT fleets reliably
• Supports MQTT, HTTPS, MQTT over WSS, and LoRaWAN communication protocols

IoT Core lets you route trillions of messages from billions of devices through the AWS services without having to manage infrastructure.

AWS IoT Device Defender

IoT Device Defender is a fully managed service that secures your fleet of IoT devices. It also includes continuous real-time monitoring of security metrics.

• Sends out security alerts
• Provides built-in incident mitigation actions
• Remote device auditing and configuration

AWS IoT Device Management

AWS IoT Device Management is for registering, organizing, monitoring, and remotely managing IoT devices at various scales.

• Fast device registration
• Easy remote device access
• Allows you to organize devices into groups with set access privileges
• Devices are labeled and easy to locate

IoT Device Management also doubles down as an auditing and monitoring service. It sends out alerts when devices deviate from what’s assigned as normal behavior.

AWS IoT SiteWise

IoT SiteWise is a managed service that aims to simplify the process of collecting, organizing, and analyzing industrial equipment data through AWS.

• Use remote equipment performance monitoring to identify and resolve issues
• Use insights from automatic, customizable data visualization to optimize processes across the fleet
• Collect and process industrial data locally
• Build hybrid industrial applications across the edge and cloud
• Collect, manage, and visualize data directly from IoT fleet

AWS IoT Events

AWS IoT Events is a managed service that allows you to monitor your IoT devices fleet in real-time. It continuously scans for failures and changes in operations and initiates a series of actions when specific events occur.

• Easy-to-build rules using “if-then-else” statements
• Build your own or select prebuilt actions to trigger in specific events
• Easily evaluate the validity of multiple sources of telemetry data to analyze the state and health of devices

AWS IoT Analytics

AWS IoT Analytics is a fully managed analytics service that operationalizes data incoming from your IoT devices fleet. It’s also able to automatically scale to support up to petabytes of IoT data. 

• Automatically prepares IoT data for analysis
• Running queries on IoT data is straightforward
• Built-in machine learning tools
• Pay-as-you-go pricing model with automatic scaling

AWS IoT Analytics allows you to analyze data from millions and devices simultaneously without having to manage hardware and infrastructure.

AWS IoT Things Graph

AWS IoT Things Graph makes it easier to visually connect different devices and web services to build streamlined IoT apps. It provides a drag-and-drop interface for a low-code approach to building IoT apps.

• Provides reusable, pre-built models for common device types such as cameras and motion sensors
• Allows you to build both minimalist and highly-complex models through a set of interactions in a specific order
• Packages and deploys IoT data directly to AWS Cloud and IoT Greengrass-enabled devices

Things Graph’s flexibility allows it to work in environments that vary in complexity, from home automation to industrial automation and energy management.

AWS IoT 1-Click

AWS IoT 1-Click is a service that enables devices to trigger AWS Lambda functions to execute an action. Devices with built-in IoT 1-Click support allow you to perform 1-click actions, such as notifying technical support, initiating asset tracking, and replenishing goods and services.

• Ready-use and doesn’t require installation or configuration
• Groups devices by function, location, or any other desired criteria
• Provides pre-defined Lambda functions
• Executes actions written in Java, Python, and C#

See more: 85 Top IoT Devices

AWS IoT Partnerships

For its IoT solutions, AWS offers two types of partnerships:

AWS IoT Competency Partners

The AWS IoT Competency Program is for partners that have demonstrated deep AWS technical expertise and have showcased proven customer success in their industry.

These IoT partners are vetted and divided into four categories: Technology for Edge, Technology for Gateway, Technology for Platform Providers, and Technology for Connectivity.

AWS IoT Solution-Specific Partners

Solution-specific partnership programs are for AWS IoT partners that are able to demonstrate their knowledge and expertise in an AWS IoT product and provide evidence of reliability and performance. Program examples include AWS IoT Core Partners, AWS IoT Greengrass Partners, and AWS IoT Analytics Partners.

AWS IoT Use Case

One of AWS’s IoT clients is Seafloor Systems. 

Seafloor Systems is an American manufacturing company that specializes in delivering high-performance hydrographic survey solutions to the marine industry.

It utilizes a fleet of hydrographic robots that survey underwater. In order for the robots to be as autonomous as possible, Seafloor Systems wanted a globally scalable set of tools and resources that would allow it to streamline both the development and production of its robots.

“As our technology stack has grown, we wouldn’t be able to manufacture at the scale at which we sell without using AWS IoT Greengrass,” says Marcos Barrera, lead robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) researcher at Seafloor Systems.

“You can’t build an infrastructure and have people in disparate locations work well together without a strong backbone and scalability. That’s one reason I was drawn to AWS.”

AWS IoT Greengrass saves Seafloor Systems at least four hours of manual labor in building the software stack for each of their robots.

The company now saves about $1,500 per robot deployment by using Greengrass to deploy robots in remote locations, with the processes taking anywhere from minutes to one hour.

User Reviews of AWS IoT

Ratings of AWS IoT vary per solution. However, their solutions have an overall high rating by a variety companies using them.

G2: 4.1 out of 5

Gartner Peer Insights: 4.3 out of 5

TrustRadius: 8.6 out of 10

Industry Recognition of AWS IoT

AWS’ IoT portfolio of solutions is widely recognized in the IoT and cloud markets. 

In 2020, AWS IoT was named Best Consumer IoT Solution at the IoT World Awards.

The award honors AWS’ innovation in creating IoT solutions that can be used in a variety of applications, from home automation, security, and monitoring to energy management and networking.

AWS IoT Competitors

AWS competes with a variety of key vendors in the Internet of Things space, including:

Microsoft
Google
IBM
SAS
Cisco