AWS Re 5 New Services That Bolster AWS' IoT Core

AWS Broadens IoT Investment

AWS is pulling out all the stop on its IoT business with the announcement Wednesday of a slew of new services that enhance its IoT platform.

At AWS Re:Invent 2017, AWS launched AWS IoT Device Management, AWS IoT Analytics and AWS IoT Device Defender services to help customers get started easily with IoT, rapidly onboard and easily manage fleets of connected devices, enforce security policies and analyze data at scale.

"These new AWS IoT services will allow customers to simply and quickly operationalize, secure, and scale entire fleets of devices, and then act on the large volumes of data they generate with new analytics capabilities specifically designed for IoT," said Dirk Didascalou, VP of AWS' IoT business, in a statement.

Following are five new IoT AWS services partners can look forward to.

IoT Device Defender

At Re:Invent, AWS announced IoT Device Defender, a new service coming in the first half of 2018.

This service offers continuous auditing of security policies for IoT devices, and alerts customers when non-compliant devices are detected. In addition, the service gives customers tools – such as device information, device statistics, diagnostic logs, and previous alerts – to help them mitigate security issues on their IoT devices.

IoT Device Management

AWS released IoT Device Management, available today, which helps customers easily onboard, monitor and manage IoT devices throughout their lifecycle – from setup, to software updates, to retirement.

Using the service's templates, customers can quickly onboard entire fleets of devices and include information about device certificates and access policies. AWS IoT Device Management also extends the existing IoT Device Registry, enabling customers to create a hierarchical model of your fleet and to set policies on a hierarchical basis.

Amazon FreeRTOS

AWS announced Amazon FreeRTOS, an open-source operating system that extends the functionality of AWS IoT to devices with very low computing power, such as lightbulbs, smoke detectors, and conveyor belts.

"Amazon FreeRTOS is an IoT microcontroller operating system that simplifies development, security, deployment, and maintenance of microcontroller-based edge devices," said Tara Walker, Technical Evangelist for Amazon Web Services, in a blog post. "Amazon FreeRTOS extends the FreeRTOS kernel, a popular real-time operating system, with libraries that enable local and cloud connectivity, security, and (coming soon) over-the-air updates."

IoT Analytics

AWS announced IoT Analytics, a service currently available in preview, which processes, stores and analyzes IoT device data at scale so that customers can understand device performance and predict device failure.

"With the AWS IoT Analytics service, you can process messages, gather and store large amounts of device data, as well as query your data. Also, the new AWS IoT Analytics service feature integrates with Amazon Quicksight for visualization of your data and brings the power of machine learning through integration with [open-source web application] Jupyter Notebooks," said Walker in a blog post.

Greengrass ML Inference

AWS bolstered its capabilities for IoT edge applications with the launch of Greengrass ML Inference, a new feature of AWS' Greengrass edge service that lets application developers add machine learning to their devices, without requiring special machine learning skills.

With AWS Greengrass ML Inference, currently available in preview, devices can run machine learning models to perform inference tasks locally, get results, and then make smart decisions quickly, even when they're not connected.