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Google's Cloud IoT Core management platform, which the company introduced earlier this year as a service attached to its Google Cloud Platform, is in public beta and the company added more security and connectivity features.
Cloud IoT Core is a cloud-based service for managing all the data collected from various Internet of Things devices and sensors; it then sorts and processes that data later in Google's cloud. Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure each offer similar services within their respective public clouds.
Since its introduction, the platform was in private beta for certain customers. In a blog posted on Wednesday, Indranil Chakraborty, product manager for Google Cloud, notes the service has found users in the transportation, oil and gas, utilities, healthcare and ride-sharing markets.
Figure 1: (Source: ECN)
In addition to moving the platform from private to public beta, Google added three new features to Cloud IoT Core to assist with management, connectivity and security:
Google allows customers to use their own device keys signed by their own Certificate Authority (CA) to certify and authenticate the whole IoT process. The Google platform then certifies the signature. "This, for example, enables device manufacturers to provision their devices offline in bulk with their CA-issued certificate, and then register the CA certificates and the device public keys with Cloud IoT Core," Chakraborty wrote on September 27.
In addition to MQTT -- an industry-standard IoT protocol -- Google lets customers securely connect IoT devices, as well as gateways, over HTTP to the Cloud IoT Core.
Finally, Cloud IoT Core maintains a logical representation of the physical sensor or device, and the platform also stores the last reported state of the device. This gives the customer a glimpse of the IoT device, even if it's turned off. There also are APIs to connected applications to the device that update it if the device or sensor is shut down.
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In addition to these features, Google released a new pricing scheme for the service. There's a free tier for those waiting to try the platform, and the first 250 MB of data are complementary. Prices go up from there; the top tier offers 5TB or more per month for 45 cents per megabyte.
Finally, Google also teamed up with several partners to distribute the Cloud IoT Core platform including, Allwinner Technology, ARM, Intel, Marvell, Microchip, Mongoose OS, NXP, Realtek, Sierra Wireless and SOTEC.
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— Scott Ferguson, Editor, Enterprise Cloud News. Follow him on Twitter @sferguson_LR.
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