Over the past five years cloud computing has become one of the fastest growing trends in the information technology industry. Although there are multiple cloud providers on the market, two have emerged as leaders in the field. Amazon’s own Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft’s Azure have experienced exponential growth over the last few years. As a result, both providers are going neck to neck to take first place as the leading cloud provider.

A “hot topic” in IT right now is the Internet of Things (IoT). The term was established in 1999 by a British entrepreneur named Kevin Ashton. Essentially IoT refers to the network of computers and servers that work with physical objects or “things” that have some sort of electronic component embedded (of which includes network connectivity). We’ve moved beyond only having desktops and laptops plugged into the network. Items such as “smart” thermostats and smoke alarms as well as coffee makers and washers and dryers that connect to a Wi-Fi network to transmit data are all considered “things” in the Internet of Things.

Cloud providers are realizing how expansive the Internet of Things is actually becoming, as more objects become digitized and integrated with networks. Recently, market leaders AWS and Azure have released features of their cloud platforms that support IoT.

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft also announced support for IoT by revealing the Microsoft Azure IoT Hub which provides provisioning, communication, updates, and connectivity between the cloud and all network enabled devices. The Azure IoT Hub can control millions of devices across multiple sites. Microsoft stresses that its new IoT Suite consolidates multiple Azure services to deliver a unified IoT solution. The company is focusing on IoT through Azure as well as its newest operating system release, Windows 10.

For those following the race, Azure was the first public cloud platform to include IoT support. Amazon followed shortly thereafter.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

CIO Today reported on Amazon’s announcement of AWS IoT during the re:Invent 2015 conference taking place in Las Vegas:

AWS IoT, “enables a whole ecosystem of manufacturers, service providers, and application developers to easily connect their products to the cloud at scale, take action on the data they collect, and create a new class of applications that interact with the physical world,” said Marco Argenti, vice president for mobile and IoT at AWS.

According to Amazon, a combination of HTTP, REST, and Message Queue Telemetry Transport provide a framework so that various devices can interact with one another. AWS IoT also features an information store of each device’s latest state which allows users to monitor all network enabled devices in one place, to see how all objects are performing. The goal of AWS IoT is to enable companies to easily manage their IoT in-house.

What we don’t know is how quickly organizations are going to adopt these new offerings to unify all of their network enabled devices under one umbrella. What we do know is that as AWS and Azure both have support for IoT, other cloud providers are likely to follow suit. We’ll be keeping an eye on this trend.