Internet of Things competition heats up with Amazon’s AWS IoT

Foraying into Internet of things market, Amazon’s cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services, has launched a service called "AWS IoT" to help customers build applications to connect devices to AWS Services and other devices, secure data and interactions, process and act upon device data, and enable applications to interact with devices even when they are offline.

“AWS IoT can support billions of devices and trillions of messages, and can process and route those messages to AWS endpoints and to other devices reliably and securely”, the website reads.

AWS IoT will enable factory floors, vehicles, health care systems, household appliances and many other things to become connected, the company said in a blog post. 

It supports HTTP and MQTT, a lightweight communication protocol specifically designed to tolerate intermittent connections, minimize the code footprint on devices, and reduce network bandwidth requirements. AWS IoT also supports other industry-standard and custom protocols, and devices can communicate with each other even if they are using different protocols.

According to International Data Corp, the global market for "Internet of Things” will nearly triple to $1.7 trillion by 2020. Technology giants including Google, Intel, Cisco Systems, Samsung Electronics and telecoms firms such as Vodafone and Verizon are betting heavily on the relatively new technology to drive revenue and profit in the future, Reuters reported. Microsoft Corp rolled out an IoT suite last week.

The tech giant said on Thursday there were no minimum fees for AWS IoT and customers have to pay only for what they use. Prices are based on the number of messages published to AWS IoT (Publishing Cost), and the number of messages delivered by AWS IoT to devices or applications (Delivery Cost).

With AWS IoT free tier, customers will get 250,000 free messages per month (published or delivered), for 12 months.