Organizations of all sizes face a data challenge. Whether it is a transportation firm that needs to manage and stage vehicles in the right locations at the right times, or a manufacturing plant that needs to make sure equipment functions properly to maximize production.
Many managing those "devices" -- and the massive amount of data they generate -- is no small task. But Alphabet -- parent of Google -- claims to have a solution. Indeed, the company today announced a fully-managed Google Cloud Platform (GCP) service called Google Cloud IoT Core. When combined with other cloud IoT services, Google claims, companies will be able to analyze and capitalize on all the IoT data they generate.
Google Cloud IoT Core: Features & Benefits
Some of the key features and benefits to the Cloud IoT Core, Google claims, include:
- Rapid Setup and Management: Millions of devices spread across the globe can be connected into a single system via the industry-standard MQTT protocol. You can also deploy firmware updates automatically for Android Things-based devices, which will take a huge burden off staff trying to manage those updates manually.
- Centralized Security Management: Utilizing the Google Cloud IAM user management platform, you can control user access to specific devices. The IoT devices can also be secured via industry-standard security protocols.
- Analytic Services Integration: Data can be combined from multiple sources into the native analytic services Google already provides (including Google Cloud Dataflow, Google BigQuery and Google Cloud Machine Learning Engine) and partner BI solutions (such as Looker, Qlik, Tableau and Zoomdata). Once the data is stored and analyzed in a single system, businesses can find potential problems before they strike and locate solutions interactively. They can also create machine-learning models that are more tailored to your specific business.
- Fully-managed: This system does not have an infrastructure that you will need to build and deploy. It can be deployed within your organization using devices you currently own. It is completely managed as a pay-as-you-go GCP service.
The Cloud IoT Core service is currently available as a private beta. You can sign-up to be included in the beta on their website, but it will not guarantee your place.
Google Cloud Platform: Data Analytics
Google has always been, at its heart, a data company. It was created by building a searchable database and indexing the entire Internet. It handles almost 4 billion search queries every day. The company's cloud platform is quickly becoming the standard for massive amounts of data storage for many large corporations including Spotify, Coca-Cola, and Snapchat. Google Cloud Platform claims it "frees you from the overhead of managing infrastructure, provisioning servers and configuring networks. To let innovators innovate and let coders, well, just code."
The Cloud IT Core service takes the next logical step, allowing customers to manage big data information gathered from IoT devices and associated sensors.
It sounds promising, but potential competition also looms. From GE to Microsoft, Amazon, IBM and Salesforce, just about every major cloud vendor is extending its platform with IoT-centric capabilities.
