Microsoft showcases Internet of Things services and cloud integration

Microsoft has showcased its expanding Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities to demonstrate how companies can jump onto the IT industry's latest bandwagon.

The Redmond company also detailed its approach to providing integration for enterprise applications across both on-premise and cloud infrastructures, indicating its continued ability to adapt its product portfolio to the ever-changing tides of the IT world.

Microsoft demonstrated its IoT offerings at Internet of Things World 2016 in Santa Clara, California.

Sam George, Microsoft's director for Azure IoT, discussed in a keynote address how businesses can get started with IoT projects right now using existing devices and assets, as well as how to take advantage of the cloud services to implement analytic processes that can drive better decision making for the future.

Microsoft was joined by customers and partners including Rockwell Automation, Analog Devices and Schneider Electric, the latter of which is using Azure IoT technology in its EcoStruxure portfolio for solutions ranging from family home thermostats to business-critical weather forecasting.

The company also used the BizTalk 360 Integrate conference in London to explain its vision to enable seamless integration among enterprise applications across cloud-native and hybrid deployments, a key issue for organisations as they add cloud services to existing enterprise IT estates.

Provisioning IT services partly or wholly in the cloud is one thing, but it can create a whole new set of headaches if those services do not integrate easily with existing systems on which an organisation depends.

Not surprisingly, Microsoft has put the BizTalk Server and Logic Apps services at the centre of its solution to enable customers to seamlessly connect traditional on-premise applications to cloud-native applications.

"For over a decade we have been helping customers create integration scenarios with BizTalk Server and more recently we have introduced additional hybrid and cloud scenarios with Logic Apps public preview," the firm said on the Microsoft Azure blog.

"With the new BizTalk server 2016 and Logic Apps releases coming soon, you will be able to connect to traditional systems and cloud native applications easily."

Customers will also be able to incorporate other Azure services like Functions and Machine Learning with Logic Apps to build richer and more scalable integration workflows, the firm said.

Microsoft showed a preview last week of Microsoft Flow, a new software-as-a-service tool for automating workflows without the need for coding.