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IoT Cloud Platform brings Cloud Computing and IoT (Internet of Things) under one roof to increase customer and business value. Today, IoT technology is growing at a rapid rate, thanks to the rising demand for Cloud Computing technology and services. Due to the increased demand, businesses are choosing this alternate solution of relying on the IoT Cloud Platform, which is far cheaper and more affordable compared to developing on-site IoT architecture.Â
Data storage in Cloud helps you reduce costs and avail many other benefits. Before we delve into IoT Cloud Solutions, let’s understand the two aspects of this solution, that is an IoT platform and Cloud Computing. Before that, if you are interested in mastering Cloud, check out the Intellipaat Cloud Computing Course designed by industry experts.Â
What is an IoT cloud platform?
Internet of Things or IoT describes physical objects that are equipped with sensors, computation engines, software, and other associated technologies allowing them to connect and communicate with other systems or devices across the internet. Now IoT platforms enable these IoT devices to supply, manage, and automate tasks within a specified IoT infrastructure.
In simple words, an IoT Cloud Platform is a platform that integrates various technologies and software into an ecosystem that helps each of the connected devices with all its functionalities. It helps in collecting data and handling them over the network. Without an IoT Cloud Platform, the connected devices are nothing but useless in their own functions and stay fragmented.
What is the role of Cloud Computing in IoT Cloud Solutions?
Cloud Computing is a relatively new technology and is breathing new life into various IT services. This piece of technology has helped customers and businesses to move their applications to the internet. Implementing Cloud into their business has helped companies globally in optimizing their resource utilization, increasing performance, reduction in costs, etc.
Otherwise, the companies still would have been spending a major chunk of their capital and resource on building and maintaining on-site IT architecture for data storage and for running applications.
Cloud-based applications or solutions help companies in saving a lot more in the long run. It helps in offering several benefits like better security, increased data mobility, enhanced co-worker collaboration, offers more advanced disaster recovery solutions, etc. Cloud allows businesses to focus more on their business rather than wasting their time and capital on IT-related issues affecting the business.
The scenario before the invention and adoption of Cloud Computing was that companies who wished to go digital had to set up their own IT infrastructure with all the servers, software, and hardware. On top of that, they had to update, upgrade, maintain, and secure to allow them to increase their business operations. These steps would take away a lot of their capital and demands a huge investment that brings risk factor into the scenario.
Today, companies who wish to be IoT-driven must choose between establishing an expensive and hardly scalable on-site infrastructure or choosing IoT Cloud Solutions that will eliminate unnecessary costs and offer platform functionality. If companies choose the on-site infrastructure, then they will end up with huge expenses that will drive down their profitability. But if they choose the latter one, then they will enjoy several benefits that will change the entire game. Read on to find these benefits out.
Benefits of Cloud Platform in IoT
Data Mobility
Using Cloud platforms for IoT, allows you to store data over the cloud and process it on the server. Above that, the data could be accessed from any part of the world where there is a stable internet connection. That means the entire infrastructure is not bound by any networking constraints. Data Mobility is such an important benefit when it comes to IoT projects that involve real-time monitoring and connected devices management. These Cloud platforms enable the companies to provision, manage, and update these devices and process the data remotely and in real-time.
Scalability
It’s probably one of the greatest advantages of choosing IoT-based Cloud solutions. Scalability is an important feature that businesses are looking forward to in every sector. Scaling up in an on-site infrastructure will push companies to buy more hardware, and invest more time and effort to help them achieve the target configuration.
Choosing a cloud-based solution on the other hand will help companies in speeding their operations. With just a few clicks, they are able to add more cloud storage, and extra virtual servers to handle the traffic and computation. It will also help in scaling down the number of servers or bringing down the cloud storage when not in use helps in streamlining the operations of the company.
Time to market
With the help of IoT-based Cloud solutions, the time to market is less because it allows the companies to easily implement the solutions, lower the costs, etc. But this could involve huge cloud platform customizations.
The IoT infrastructure that sits on-site involves a huge deployment time that involves data management, analysis, and upgrading of the company’s existing network infrastructure to meet the increased traffic. Overall, the Cloud-based IoT infrastructure comes out to be the winner when it comes to the time to market factor of the business.
Security
Security is a major concern for IoT devices right from its inception. If you pitch IoT Cloud solutions against on-site infrastructure then there is a major difference between the two. If it’s on-site infrastructure, then the entire security falls into their responsibility.
If the security is kept tight within the organization there is a lesser chance of data breach and other implications. Whereas if data is not kept safe, then the data is not safe within their limited integrity in security terms. It’s quite understandable when companies hesitate to give away their power of control over data to external parties like other cloud service providers.
But there is a general consensus that storing and processing data over the cloud is more secure than keeping it on-site. Cloud Service providers offer their customers robust security characteristics, regular software, and firmware updates, with 24/7 monitoring. These steps help in preventing any sort of security breaches on the platforms.
Cost-effectiveness
We have already discussed the cost-effectiveness of the Cloud for businesses. In the case of in-house or on-site IoT infrastructure, large upfront investment and implementation risks are very bad and discouraging for upcoming and growing IoT companies. On top of that, there is an additional cost involved in hardware maintenance and IT personnel. If you choose the cloud option, there is a significant reduction in up-front costs with pricing schemes that are flexible based on usage.
Choosing Cloud-based solutions helps you bring down the costs, keep it transparent, and not worry about any power or hardware failure. In the case of on-site IoT infrastructure these things may generate huge costs and due to that businesses will take a hit from service downtimes.
Conclusion
As many organizations have found out, switching over to cloud-based IoT solutions is far better when compared to on-site IoT solutions that incur many unnecessary expenses. The cloud-based IoT solutions will help businesses with several benefits like scalability, less time to market, security, and data mobility, which the on-site infrastructure is simply incapable of offering.
Opting for a comprehensive IoT cloud-based platform will help companies evolve as leading companies with real-time processing capabilities and huge growth potential when compared to on-premises counterparts.
