Dell Technologies and Microsoft Collaborate to Simplify Delivery of IoT Solutions

Dell Technologies and Microsoft are collaborating to deliver a joint internet of things (IoT) solution designed to help vertical customers simplify deploying their end-to-end IoT solutions, from the edge to the cloud. The combination of Microsoft Azure IoT applications and services, VMware Pulse IoT Center and Dell Edge Gateways will offer customers streamlined management, centralized monitoring and security from devices to the cloud.

Together, Dell Technologies and Microsoft aim to make IoT easier for customers by delivering a secure solution that provides consistent infrastructure management from the edge to the cloud, the companies report.

The joint solution offers an underlying IoT infrastructure, management capabilities and security for customers looking to deploy IoT for scenarios like predictive maintenance, supply chain visibility and other use cases. The solution is designed to deliver:

• Intelligence at the edge with Microsoft Azure IoT Edge: This application extends cloud intelligence to edge devices so that devices can act locally and leverage the cloud for global coordination and machine learning at scale.
• Management and monitoring of edge devices with VMware Pulse IoT Center: This provides more secure, enterprise-grade management and monitoring of diverse, certified edge devices including gateways and connected IoT devices, bios and operating systems. This ecosystem will be built over time involving deeper integration and certification to support customer requirements.
• Rugged Dell Edge Gateways: IoT devices with dual-core Intel Atom processors connect a variety of wired and wireless devices and systems to aggregate and analyze inputs and send relevant data to the cloud.

VMware Pulse IoT Center is designed to serve as the management glue between the hardware (Dell Edge Gateways or other certified edge systems), connected sensors and devices and the Microsoft Azure IoT Edge. Initially, Pulse will help to deploy the Microsoft Azure IoT Edge to the requisite edge systems so that it can start collecting, analyzing and acting on data in real time. While this joint solution is optimized for Dell Edge Gateways it can continuously manage, monitor and better secure certified combination of gateways/edge systems with the latest patches and updates on an ongoing basis as well as monitor the health of these connected devices.

This IoT solution is expected to be available in the second half of 2018.

For more info, visit Dell and Microsoft.

Sources: Press materials received from the company.