TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Microsoft Azure IoT Central vs. Microsoft Azure IoT Edge

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Azure IoT Central

    Score8 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft Azure IoT Central allows users to connect IoT devices to the cloud and offers centralized management to configure and updated connected devices.N/A

    Azure IoT Edge

    Score8.3 out of 10
    N/AAzure IoT Edge is a fully managed service built on Azure IoT Hub. Users can deploy cloud workloads—artificial intelligence, Azure and third-party services, or business logic—to run on Internet of Things (IoT) edge devices via standard containers. The vendor states that by moving certain workloads to the edge of the network, devices spend less time communicating with the cloud, react more quickly to local changes, and operate reliably even in extended offline periods.N/A
    Pricing
    Azure IoT CentralAzure IoT Edge
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Azure IoT CentralAzure IoT Edge
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    Azure IoT CentralAzure IoT Edge
    Internet of Things
    Comparison of Internet of Things features of Microsoft Azure IoT Central and Microsoft Azure IoT Edge
    Feature
    Microsoft Azure IoT Central
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Azure IoT Edge
    8.4
    4 Ratings
    5% above category average
    IoT Device Management00 Ratings8.04 Ratings
    Device Security00 Ratings10.04 Ratings
    IoT Data Management00 Ratings9.04 Ratings
    IoT Analytics00 Ratings7.04 Ratings
    IoT Integration00 Ratings8.04 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Azure IoT CentralAzure IoT Edge
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    AWS IoT Core
    Score10 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    AWS IoT Core
    Score10 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Azure IoT CentralAzure IoT Edge
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.9
    (3 ratings)
    8.0
    (4 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Azure IoT CentralAzure IoT Edge
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Microsoft
    Microsoft Azure IoT Central has native integrations with Visual Studio (like pretty much all Microsoft products) making it pretty simple to publish apps to Azure App Service, where you can host all sorts of different applications. It does a really good job of storing large amounts of data (for instance, collected from IoT devices with various sensors) and it gets stored to multiple DBs. Azure IoT Central could improve by adding more customizations, as this would make troubleshooting the products easier and make future costs smaller and easier to predict.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Deployment of mission critical business support solutions particularly those that support virtual learning and video conferencing environments. This is because they help organisations such as the university to effectively transition to a digitally compliant organisation.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Microsoft
    • Documentation
    • Support
    • Good and approachable GUI
    • Many types of subscription configurations
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • It works even if there is no internet at client location. It will record all the generated data and only send them to cloud storage when there is internet connection.
    • It allows you to bring cloud functionality down to Edge location in the form of docker container.
    • It also supports two way communication from device to cloud and vice-versa.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Microsoft
    • central application
    • smartphone app
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • For some reason, the containerized architecture was also making this very hard
    • Had some issues when debugging edge modules, needs a professional grade remote debugging
    • Industrial automation still requires attention. OPC-UA was good but Modbus or custom PLCs etc was painful to set up
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    Most of the time it works perfectly, does not require any attention, but when there is a problem, it's really hard to diagnose it. I think the documentation for the positive scenarios are good on the Microsoft side, but for negative scenarios, I don't think there is enough community help out there, in my opinion.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Microsoft
    Before deciding to go with Microsoft Azure IoT Central, we considered Google, Datadog, and AWS alternatives. The reason we went with Azure was that the client was heavily invested in Microsoft technologies and Azure plays really well with other Microsoft products. The competitive products might be a little bit easier to set up, with more flexible pricing, but, the integrations with other Microsoft services were the deciding factor for our use case.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    The reason Behind this is the cost, as Microsoft provides solutions and integrations of services cheaper than AWS.
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Microsoft
    • positive: connected huge number of machines as IoT devices and passed them through entire IoT pipeline until storage in a fairly short time
    • negative: we spent some time figuring out some "less-used" services because they aren't documented well
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Very valuable return on investment for IT capex committed to the deployment
    • Improvements in overall organisational efficiency and agility
    • Repositioning the organisation to become digitally transformed
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots