Item: AWS IoT Core
Rating: 10
Author: Manu Gupta

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We developed a solution on Electronic health record as a service and found the need of AWS iot core for subscribing devices for automated notification and messages for updating electronic health records and screening methods. AWS iot core enable us to develop and scale a full stack solution without the need of managing the entire infrastructure. We wish to continue exploring its need in asset management and predictive maintenance solution of medical devices.

Pros and Cons

Real time communication and sending messages
Ability to utilize a variety of communication protocols
Filter, transform, and act upon device data on the fly, based on your defined business rules.
Secure device connections and end to end encryption

Ability to integrate with EtherCalc software solution
Ability to introduce NFC toolchains and systems which could be utilized in iot modular gateway solutions like drones
Ability to reduce latency as the solution scales is very much needed
Hybrid solution which can integrate other existing iot solutions into AWS iot core

Most Important Features

Prototyping publish/subscribe solutions across devices
Experimenting with a variety of communication protocols very quickly
Learn how to filter, transform and act on device data using toolkit
End to end encryption management implementation

Return on Investment

Gives confidence to prototype iot solutions across lots of devices in little time
Ability to meet requirements for managing a variety of communication protocols
Learning iot analytics and visualization for faster insights enablement
Onboarding devices and managing quickly without building inhouse solutions

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Azure IoT Edge, Microsoft Azure IoT Hub and Microsoft Azure IoT Central

AWS iot core is a good starting point which can be utilized for a variety of enterprise solutions. Barrier to entry to experiment and try AWS iot core is less and AWS eco-system providers ensure that even startups can try a variety of solutions and build key skills and capabilities using the iot stack. In case of Azure, they definitely have a very good iot stack but learning azure and the iot eco-system seems like an eco-system for established players. It requires a startup to dedicate considerable developer hours to learn and appreciate the stack. Further, opportunities to get clients in iot domain is not easy in both these eco-systems at this juncture :)

Key Insights

Do you think AWS IoT Core delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with AWS IoT Core's feature set?

Yes

Did AWS IoT Core live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of AWS IoT Core go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy AWS IoT Core again?

Yes

Other Software Used

EtherCalc, Ionic, GitHub

Likelihood to Recommend

AWS iot core is very useful if you need to scale very quickly for managing lots of devices without handling the underlying infrastructure cost. It can enable real time publishing and subscription of devices, monitoring and early stage intervention in case of unexpected issues while developing a full stack solution. However, healthcare scenarios where government intervention is needed should be developed and scaled by following the set of compliance policies of the government and the SLA requirements of the customer. Finally, it is great where you need to do data science research after anonymizing data.

Predictive and Corrective Maintenance across tons of devices safely and securely on the go

Overall Satisfaction with AWS IoT Core