Friendly offer on plug and play for Microsoft Azure IoT

  • April 14, 2021
  • Steve Rogerson

Israeli IoT device management company Friendly Technologies has partnered Microsoft to offer full plug-and-play technology for Microsoft’s Azure IoT.

Friendly has an installed customer base of more than 250 carriers and operators globally. Its technology includes integration with both MS Azure IoT Hub and Azure IoT Plug & Play, enabling automated connectivity for Azure IoT of standard IoT devices, supporting LwM2M and TR-369/USP.

Friendly worked with Microsoft’s Azure IoT product team and completed the integration of the Microsoft IoT Hub over a year ago. The integration offers full Azure IoT Hub Device Twin support, includes support for device concurrency, desired and reported property updates, direct methods, and device messages. Following the initial completed integration, Microsoft launched Azure IoT Central, offering device plug-and-play support, which Friendly has recently added to its list of integrations.

Users can now easily connect devices to the MS Azure platform that they were previously unable to or those that are not supported automatically on the Azure IoT cloud, thereby enabling a seamless and automated process. The journey of connecting their IoT devices via bootstrap and/or registration to telemetry and commands, all done securely from their cloud applications to edge devices anywhere in the world, is made possible by this development.

Azure IoT Central is Microsoft’s IoT application enablement platform, where developers can build complete end-to-end IoT offerings using the Azure IoT framework. Friendly’s One-IoT LwM2M connector was essential, allowing for IoT devices to be connected via NB-IoT, Cat-M1, and with the amalgamation of these networks on new 5G rollouts.

The One-IoT device management platform is classed as a carrier-grade IoT device management product, connecting any IoT device regardless of protocols to upstream cloud applications.

Friendly’s support for the Azure IoT Plug & Play includes: create and update devices; create and update templates; and get device credentials in Azure IoT Central. The integration also includes provisioning devices in Azure DPS device provisioning service, as well as the bidirectional communications via Azure IoT Hub Device Twins to update property and telemetry, and receive commands.

“Friendly’s One-IoT platform includes a host of cloud connectors, such as Kafka, AMQPS, PubSub, MQTTS and other stream protocols, which allows our solution to be cloud ready,” said Sean van der Walt, Friendly Technologies’ IoT product director. “Our One-IoT is cloud and device-agnostic, and we’re especially proud of the fact that we were the first in the world to connect LwM2M IoT devices to Microsoft’s Azure IoT more than 18 months ago, and we are the first in the world to release our Azure IoT Plug & Play connector.”

Ilan Migdal, Friendly Technologies’ CEO, added: “IoT enterprises, utilities, carriers, operators and service providers now have the ability to seamlessly connect their IoT assets to cloud platforms, to scale their service operations, to streamline the costs for mass deployment, and to optimise operations for their service personnel, thereby creating business efficiencies and improving business returns across the value chain.”

Friendly Technologies provides operator-class platforms for IoT, smart home and TR-069 device management. It has been providing TR-069 device management to operators and service providers since 2007.

When IoT and smart home first appeared, Friendly leveraged its expertise and expanded its offering to the IoT and smart home markets. Today, it offers a unified IoT platform for managing LwM2M, MQTT, OMA-DM and TR-069 devices, and a complete package for the smart home.

The platforms let users generate revenue streams in smart home and IoT markets, such as utilities, transportation and smart cities.