Canadian IoT provider Sierra Wireless has integrated its Acculink managed IoT offering with Microsoft Azure IoT Central to help companies track the location and condition of high-value and sensitive assets.

Acculink leverages Sierra Wireless’ expertise in IoT devices, global connectivity and cloud to deliver a single option companies can use to monitor the near real-time status of assets anywhere in the world, and is delivered as a service for a single monthly fee.

Azure IoT Central is an application platform-as a-service (APaaS) that provides developers with a way to connect and manage devices at scale, enabling their customers to use IoT data in their digital transformations.

“Drawing on our more than two decades of experience in the IoT market, Sierra Wireless has designed Acculink to address the three key needs facing companies as they seek to track high-value and sensitive assets – real-time visibility, product-level tracking and exception-based monitoring,” said Jim Ryan, senior vice president at Sierra Wireless. “As a long-time partner of Microsoft, we are excited to now be able to offer our customers added functionality, and the ability to quickly leverage the suite of devices that are supported by Microsoft’s Azure IoT Central. Azure IoT Central allows us to integrate third party devices with the Azure platform quickly and easily, and any device that is already integrated with IoT Central can be easily leveraged on Acculink’s platform.”

Built on a foundation provided by Microsoft Azure cloud, Acculink is now integrated with Azure IoT Central providing a managed bundle of hardware and platform. Now, with Azure IoT Central, Acculink offers device management, application enablement and an administrative interface to track and monitor high-value and sensitive assets via an IoT platform, built on Azure.

“Acculink is a big win for customers in logistics and supply chain management, allowing them to monitor real-time status of their assets anywhere in the world,” said Sam George, corporate vice president at Microsoft. “Building Acculink with Azure IoT Central gave Sierra Wireless a number of important advantages, allowing them to accelerate their development efforts by reducing complexity, to deliver an offer that scales globally, and to take advantage of our large IoT plug-and-play device portfolio and device builder ecosystem.”

A one-stop end-to-end offering to track and manage cargo and assets in transit, Acculink provides the supply-chain visibility needed to avoid shipping delays, reduce dwell time, prevent theft and remediate environmental conditions that can lead to asset damage. In addition to tracking the location of these assets, Acculink can also alert customers if an asset is exposed to light, changes in temperature, humidity, shock or other conditions that might spoil or otherwise damage it.

Together, Acculink and Azure let users build rules on the time series data generated based on location, sensor readings and use-case needs.

Acculink is available throughout North America and comes in three varieties – Acculink Cargo for tracking shipments, Acculink Fleet for tracking vehicles, and Acculink Satellite which provides global satellite tracking without the need for cellular activity. Sierra Wireless plans to expand availability to other regions in the future.