Microsoft Announces Official Open Source Azure IoT Edge

Microsoft announced that the Azure IoT Edge computing service publicly previewed at the end of last year has entered the official version and is open sourced by GitHub.

Azure IoT Edge primarily shifts cloud-based analytics and custom business logic to edge devices, enabling companies to focus on insights into business opportunities rather than data management. Microsoft said that these devices will now be able to take real-time data actions immediately.

With the open source Azure IoT Edge, developers have more flexibility in controlling their edge solutions, as well as runtime or debugging issues.

Image: Microsoft

Also, the official version of Azure IoT Edge will also support the Docker-compatible Moby container management system. Microsoft will also expand Azure authentication for the Internet of Things to begin software and hardware certifications for edge devices, including runtime, device management, and security.

To address security issues in the large-scale deployment of Azure IoT Edge, Azure IoT Edge has deeply integrated device provisioning services to securely configure tens of thousands of devices and Azure IoT Edge security administrators who can be used to protect edge devices and Its components. Automatic Device Management (ADM) can deploy large IoT edge modules to devices based on device metadata.

Azure IoT Edge supports programming languages such as C#, C, Node.js, Python, and Java. It also provides VSCode module development, test and deployment tools, and CI/CD pipelines with VSTS.

There are three essential components for deploying Azure IoT Edge, namely Azure IoT Edge Runtime, Azure IoT Hub and Edge modules. Azure IoT Edge Runtime is the free and open source, but customers must use the paid Azure IoT Hub instance for expansion. Edge device management and deployment will also base on Azure services or customer-used Edge modules.