on a way to Wordpress of IoT…

“If you think about browsing as a concept, animals browse for food in the jungle. They literally look for leaves and pick out the good ones. It’s this very genetic, very deep impulse that we have to browse.” — Evan Sharp (on a Wired mag. conversation)

I’ve been browsing for development boards for last decade. Purchasing most of them. Early this year, I was given a development board called MXCHIP AZ3166. A tiny board with so much to offer (and some limitations as well). However, it has all the bells and whistles that an enthusiast with a few ideas could experiment with, without knowing electronics or software development.

MXCHIP comes with a bunch of sensors and connectivity (WiFi) out of the box. You don’t have to worry about connecting sensors, attaching cables etc… The OLED screen on the front, makes basic interactions easy and fun. It also comes with two buttons for user interactions.

If you were looking for an easy way to enter the ‘world of’ IoT, try searching for mxchip azure iot central on your favorite search engine. Azure’s IoT central is one of the easiest ways to interact with the internet of things. [Disclosure: I work with the engineering team that develops azure iot central. However, all the opinions here are mine.]

Easy huh? If you had tried Azure IoT Central with or without mxchip, you might have realized the state of art in simplicity. This is just the beginning. Various platforms and services work tirelessly to improve device development experience and intelligent cloud offerings around it. Few of them make things “dead-easy” for the rest of us. For example, I’ve been lucky enough to observe engineers / non-engineers experimenting with IoT central (SaaS service) and MCHIP AZ3166 (device pictured above). The enthusiasts with no device / IoT experience could easily configure MXCHIP and connect it to cloud. They actually went above and beyond in no time and created solutions for their day to day problems. (i.e. if the temperature of a storage room is above or below a temperature range, send me an email)

azure iot central ux

I spend most of my time developing device / API side things. It’s nice to have many firmware variations out there but honestly the variety hasn’t been easy for any of us to work with flawlessly. If you look at them closely, variations don’t always come with beneficial differences. (i.e. toolchain differences, learning curve, vendor lock-in) I would expect (and hope) a significant drop in the number of device/firmware alternatives. Only a few strongly supported community firmware to survive by maturing their features, abilities and fostering a user community around them.

Also expect the small (not niche!) IoT service offerings (both SAAS and PAAS) to disappear. Unless no genius changes the ways we do the things (i.e. how Twitter has changed the media), expect the usual loop… The more user feedback these services get (assuming they are receptive to feedback) the better they will get. Services like IoT Central cannot live in a vacuum, they must adapt to the needs of the user base. I would expect that user base will demand more end-user based scenarios are supported.

We can look to CMS (content management service) platforms as an analogy here. Serving the contents on the web has evolved remarkably over the years. I remember the CGI days and hosting my own Wordpress blogs. I still have blogspot posts around and I have my personal domain name without any hosting service behind it. Yet, I’m posting here at Medium. Because, I don’t want to spend my time with hosting a web app, keeping my blog service up to date (both software and design) and more... If I would develop a back-end solution for my devices, I would not like to invest into user management, device registration etc. as well. The core value in my blogs are the posts I write, not my user management system or such. Similarly, the real value of my devices come from the purpose they serve and experience they provide. So, I would need the system that provides enough customization for me to provide the necessary experience securely.

I like where Azure IoT Central stands today and how it makes both industrial and experimental IoT SaaS easier for both professionals and enthusiast. Make no mistake, there is no Wordpress of IoT offerings yet. No one is ready for ‘semi decentralization’. One thing for sure, we move fast and the next big thing will be here with us in no time.