Cloud – Data Centre

What is Cloud? The Cloud is a combination of middleware and software services offered to carry out complex computations, processing, and analytics, as well as to provide storage, database networking and more over the internet.

For much of IoT, the head (or rather, the brain) of the system is in the cloud. Cloud-based service or end-application is another end point in an IoT system, which is essential to reap true benefits of deployed end nodes. Sensors and devices collect data and perform actions, but the processing typically happens in the cloud. Cloud for IoT is a set of fully-managed and integrated services that allow you to easily and securely connect, manage, and ingest IoT data from globally dispersed devices at a large scale process, analyse/visualize that data in real time, implement operational changes and take actions as needed.

All the software applications and cloud services are custom-built for specific requirements, and utilize various tools to make this happen. For example, a web service could be built using Classic ASP, PHP or ASP.NET and similar scripting technologies. PC-based software could be developed with VB or VC, while mobile phone apps such as Android, Windows or iOS-based applications are developed using Eclipse or app-inventor like tools.

Types of cloud services:

• Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

• Platform as a service (PaaS)

• Software as a service (SaaS)

Some of the popular IoT Cloud Platform solutions include Artik Cloud, Autodesk Fusion Connect, AWS IOT, GE Predix, Google Cloud IoT, Microsoft Azure IoT Suite, IBM Watson IoT, ThingWorx, Intel IoT Platform, Salesforce IoT Cloud, Telit DeviceWise, Zebra Zatar Cloud, macchina.io, ThingSpeak, and Particle Cloud.