Microsoft layoffs 2024 became the latest big tech layoff and and showed us that this trend continues. Microsoft is laying off hundreds of employees in its Azure and mixed reality departments. These layoffs, which affect up to 1,500 positions, are part of a larger reorganization within the company’s Strategic Missions and Technologies (SMT) group. This change is driven by Microsoft’s increased focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and other advanced technologies.

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Everything you need to know about the Microsoft layoffs 2024

Microsoft has strategically decided to lay off hundreds of employees across its Azure and mixed reality businesses. Here’s a detailed look into the specifics and implications of these layoffs:

Number of employees affected

• Up to 1,500 positions are being cut within the Azure for Operators and Mission Engineering sectors.

These layoffs are part of a broader organizational restructuring within Microsoft’s Strategic Missions and Technologies (SMT) organization.

Departments impacted

• Azure for Operators: This team focuses on providing cloud solutions tailored for telecommunications operators.
• Mission Engineering: This group works on mission-critical engineering projects.
• HoloLens 2 and Mixed Reality: Microsoft’s mixed reality division, including teams working on the HoloLens 2, is also affected.

Microsoft layoffs 2024’s affect on MSFT stock

Despite a slight decline, Microsoft stock remains resilient and appears largely unaffected by the recent layoffs. Investors seem confident in the company’s strategic shift towards artificial intelligence and other growth areas, viewing the layoffs as a necessary adjustment to stay competitive in the rapidly evolving tech landscape.

Microsoft will continue to invest anyway

The SMT organization, led by Jason Zander, the former executive vice president of Microsoft Azure, is known for its work in quantum computing, space exploration, and other cutting-edge technologies.

A Microsoft spokesperson emphasized that these layoffs are part of “organizational and workforce adjustments,” which are a regular part of managing the business. Despite these reductions, the company remains committed to investing in strategic growth areas and supporting its customers and partners.

Of course, Microsoft layoffs 2024 is related to AI, like everything in the world right now

Microsoft’s increased focus on artificial intelligence is a key reason for these layoffs. The company is shifting resources to boost its AI capabilities, which are seen as crucial for future growth. Because of this, Microsoft is stopping work on some projects like Azure Operator 5G Core and Azure Operator Call Protection. Employees from these projects will move to the Azure Edge and Platform product line in the Cloud + AI group, reflecting the new focus on AI.

Impact on mixed reality

The layoffs also hit the HoloLens 2 and mixed reality departments. However, Microsoft is still committed to major projects like the U.S. Department of Defense’s Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) and Windows 365 mixed reality hardware. This shows that while some parts of mixed reality are being reduced, important projects will continue.

Featured image credit: Eray Eliaçık/Bing

Where artificial intelligence (AI) plays a crucial role in various aspects of our lives, ensuring that AI systems are safe and reliable is more important than ever. That’s why Microsoft has introduced the new Azure AI Studio tools.

These tools are designed to be easy to use and help Azure customers make sure their AI services are trustworthy even if they aren’t hiring groups of red teamers to test the AI services they built.

How can Microsoft help you to build your AI service?

The new Microsoft Azure AI Studio tools provide easy-to-use features that help Azure customers improve the safety and reliability of their AI services without needing to hire specialized red team testers. Here’s how these tools can help:

• Prompt Shields: Azure AI Studio’s Prompt Shields feature acts as a robust defense mechanism against prompt injections and malicious inputs that could compromise the integrity of AI models. By automatically detecting and blocking unauthorized prompts from external documents, Prompt Shields ensure that models adhere to their intended training objectives, thereby minimizing the risk of adversarial attacks.
• Groundedness detection: This tool is instrumental in identifying and mitigating hallucinations within AI-generated content. By leveraging advanced algorithms, groundedness detection can distinguish between genuine and spurious information, thereby enhancing the accuracy and reliability of AI outputs. This capability is particularly crucial in preventing the dissemination of misleading or false information.
• Safety evaluations: Azure AI Studio’s Safety Evaluations feature offers users a comprehensive assessment of their AI models’ vulnerabilities and performance. By simulating various attack scenarios, including prompt injection attacks and the propagation of hateful content, users gain valuable insights into potential weaknesses within their models. This proactive approach enables users to address vulnerabilities preemptively, reducing the likelihood of unintended outcomes or controversies.

• Content filtering: Azure AI Studio provides robust content filtering capabilities to shield users from inappropriate or harmful content. By allowing users to customize filtering settings based on their preferences and organizational values, Azure AI Studio ensures a tailored and inclusive approach to content moderation. This feature empowers users to create safe and conducive environments for AI development and deployment.
• User monitoring and reporting: Additionally, Azure AI Studio facilitates user monitoring and reporting, enabling administrators to track and analyze user interactions with AI models. By identifying potentially problematic users or behaviors, administrators can take proactive measures to mitigate risks and maintain the integrity of their AI ecosystems. This functionality is essential for maintaining accountability and transparency in AI deployments.

In summary, Azure AI Studio tools offer accessible solutions for enhancing AI safety and reliability, making it easier for Azure customers to deploy AI responsibly. However, these new features are not the only help you can get from Microsoft! Azure AI Speech feature is also here to streamline the avatar-making process.

The Microsoft-Mistral AI partnership is no joke. Microsoft teamed up with Mistral AI, a French start-up hailed as Europe’s counterpart to ChatGPT creator OpenAI. This collaboration underscores Microsoft’s ambition to broaden its influence within the rapidly advancing artificial intelligence sector.

Microsoft disclosed its investment in Mistral AI, a venture valued at 2 billion euros ($2.1 billion) and just 10 months old, aiming to unlock novel commercial prospects and facilitate its expansion into international markets, though specific financial details were not disclosed.

“This partnership with Microsoft enables Mistral AI with access to Azure’s cutting-edge AI infrastructure, to accelerate the development and deployment of their next generation large language models (LLMs) and represents an opportunity for Mistral AI to unlock new commercial opportunities, expand to global markets, and foster ongoing research collaboration.”

-Microsoft

Details of the Microsoft-Mistral AI collaboration

As part of the Microsoft-Mistral AI partnership, Mistral AI’s cutting-edge large language models (LLMs), which are pivotal in generating AI-driven products, will now be accessible through Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing service. This integration not only positions Mistral AI as the second entity to leverage Azure for hosting its LLMs, following OpenAI, but it also enhances the startup’s outreach to potential new clients through its innovative, multilingual conversational assistant known as “Le Chat,” or “the cat.”

This strategic collaboration is built around three primary pillars:

1. Leveraging Azure’s AI supercomputing capabilities, Microsoft is set to provide Mistral AI with unparalleled performance and scalability. This support is aimed at optimizing AI training and inference processes for Mistral AI’s flagship models, ensuring top-tier efficiency.
2. Together, Microsoft and Mistral AI will introduce Mistral AI’s advanced models to a broader audience via Models as a Service (MaaS) within the Azure AI Studio and the Azure Machine Learning model catalog. This initiative not only widens the availability of Mistral AI’s offerings but also integrates them with Azure’s AI-optimized infrastructure and enterprise-grade solutions, facilitating global distribution and promotion to Microsoft’s extensive customer base.
3. The partnership extends into collaborative efforts in AI R&D, particularly in developing specialized models tailored to the needs of select customers, including those in the European public sector. This focus on innovation and customization underscores the partnership’s commitment to advancing AI technology and applications.

The Microsoft-Mistral AI collab is setting new benchmarks in AI development and deployment, promising a future where AI-driven solutions are more accessible, efficient, and tailored to meet diverse global needs.

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Mistral Large is integrated into Azure

During Microsoft Ignite in November 2023, a significant announcement was made regarding the integration of Mistral 7B into the Azure AI model catalog, now accessible via Azure AI Studio and Azure Machine Learning. The introduction of Mistral AI’s flagship model, Mistral Large, exclusively on Azure AI and Mistral AI platforms, signifies a strategic expansion in our offerings.

Mistral Large, a versatile general-purpose language model, is designed to address any text-based application with its advanced reasoning and extensive knowledge. It stands out for its proficiency in code and mathematics, its ability to interpret multiple documents in a single query, and its multilingual support, including French, German, Spanish, Italian, and English.

This integration of Mistral AI’s superior models into the Models as a Service (MaaS) within Azure AI Studio and Azure Machine Learning offers Microsoft customers a comprehensive array of top-tier and open-source models. This facilitates the creation and implementation of tailored AI solutions, setting the stage for groundbreaking AI-powered advancements.

Featured image credit: Lumière Rezaie/Unsplash

The uptick in phishing and ransomware assaults indicates that cyberattacks are becoming more frequent and sophisticated. By stopping assaults before they start, advanced threat protection (ATP) solutions are made to reduce the dangers these attacks bring to an organization’s endpoints.

Cybersecurity is vital because it involves everything related to protecting our data from cyber attackers who wish to steal this information and use it to inflict harm. This can include private information, intellectual property, protected health information (PHI), personally identifiable information (PII), government and business information, and sensitive data.

It is essential and in everyone’s best interest to have sophisticated advanced threat protection solutions and plans in place to protect this data. Everyone in society depends on essential infrastructure, such as power plants, hospitals, and other healthcare facilities.

What is advanced threat protection?

A subset of security tools called Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) is designed to safeguard sensitive data against sophisticated cyberattacks, including malware and phishing schemes. With the threat landscape always shifting, ATP technology frequently combines cloud security, email security, endpoint security, and more to strengthen your organization’s defenses and help you better foresee and avert costly security breaches.

Advanced threat protection definition

A group of security tools known as “advanced threat protection” guards against sophisticated malware or hacking-based attacks that target sensitive data. Advanced threat protection systems can be purchased as managed services or as software. The methodologies and components of ATP solutions might vary. Still, they typically consist of endpoint agents, network devices, email gateways, malware protection systems, and a central management dashboard to correlate alarms and control defenses.

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How do advanced threat protection solutions work?

Advanced threat protection solutions are created to safeguard an organization’s endpoints from sophisticated and advanced threats. They utilize tools like machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) (ML). ATP technologies reduce the risk and potential effects of sophisticated attacks on an organization’s endpoints by putting more emphasis on threat prevention than threat detection and response. 

Advanced threat protection systems need a few essential features to achieve their goals of threat prevention and risk reduction, including: 

• Real-time visibility: Deep, real-time visibility into the events taking place on a protected endpoint is required to prevent a threat rather than respond to it after the fact. Thanks to this visibility, an advanced threat protection system can instantly identify warning signs of a potential cyber attack and thwart it before it starts.
• Contextual awareness: A deluge of security alarms generated by various security solutions and continuing threats has overwhelmed many security teams. Advanced threat protection requires context to guarantee that security personnel is aware of and capable of quickly responding to genuine threats to the company.
• Data understanding: The risk of sophisticated assaults aimed at the data held by a business is managed by ATP solutions. To do this, the tool must be able to comprehend the sensitivity and worth of the data to recognize assaults that target it and respond appropriately.

Cyberattacks now employ extensive reconnaissance and cutting-edge technology to become more sophisticated and targeted. ATP systems require the same visibility and intelligence to stop these attacks before they occur.

The most important features of advanced threat protection solutions

ATP solutions are designed to recognize and defend against assaults from highly skilled threat actors who specialize in covert attacks employing cutting-edge malware and zero-day exploits. An advanced threat protection solution must have specific capabilities to recognize and defend against various risks. These functionalities include: 

• File analytics: All of an organization’s endpoints are at serious risk from malware, especially because hackers are increasingly focusing their attacks on mobile devices. No matter where they came from or how they were delivered, every file that enters a device must be automatically analyzed for dangerous functionality before it can run on the endpoint.
• Attack management: The vast attack surface of the modern company gives an attacker several opportunities to take advantage of its endpoints. Advanced threat protection solutions employ several techniques, including application control, sandboxed file analysis, and execution, to manage an organization’s attack surfacing.
• Combined detection and prevention: Although the main objective of ATP solutions is to stop assaults before they start, some attacks may manage to execute despite an organization’s protections. In order to mitigate these risks, advanced threat protection solutions enable quick threat detection and response in addition to their preventative capabilities.
• Rich threat information: Since cyber threats are developing quickly, having access to the proper information can make the difference between successfully stopping a new attack and slipping through the gaps. Access to reliable cyber threat intelligence that gives advanced threat protection solutions and the most recent details on the most recent cyberattack campaigns is a requirement.

Why do you need advanced threat protection?

Cybercriminals are constantly coming up with increasingly complex tactics to break into networks. These attacks frequently have substantial funding, are frequently precisely targeted, and use sophisticated software that is intended to get through standard security measures. Advanced analytic tools that can quickly offer insight, analysis, context, and response into the contents and activities of malicious network traffic are necessary for combating advanced threats.

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Best advanced threat protection solutions

Below we’ve selected some of the best-advanced threat protection solutions you can find. These packages offer solutions for both businesses and individuals.

Best tools for advanced threat protection: Microsoft Office 365

Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection is an email filtering service that uses the cloud to provide real-time protection against phishing and other dangerous links, as well as zero-day protection against malware and viruses.

Select Exchange and Office 365 subscriptions can add Office 365 ATP. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 as an add-on service is a logical extension for organizations of all sizes using Microsoft 365 services. It is built to defend against a variety of advanced threats, such as business email compromise, credential phishing, and other common forms of sophisticated attacks.

The advanced threat protection platform offers additional security for protecting email, users, systems, and data with AI-powered risk detection and remediation, integrated administration within Office 365 services, and a security approach that includes prevention, detection, investigation, remediation, and even awareness education and training.

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Best tools for advanced threat protection: Sophos

Sophos’s AI and ML-powered advanced threat protection tool is called Intercept X Endpoint. With cross-product data sourcing options, ransomware file protection with automatic file recovery, behavioral analysis features, automatic detection and mitigation, and a centralized management console, the extended detection and response solution offers a full advanced threat protection package for companies of all sizes and complexity levels.

Intercept X is available in four versions: Advanced, Advanced with XDR, Advanced with MTR Standard, and Advanced with MTR Advanced. It is compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems.

Deep learning malware identification, behavioral analysis, potential undesirable application blocking, and intrusion protection are all included in the base implementation. Other capabilities include active mitigation, ransomware defenses, and data loss and exploit prevention.

Upgrade to Intercept X Advanced with XDR for more detection defenses. Examples include cross-product querying and SQL querying protections.

Human-led threat hunting and response features are added by Intercept X Advanced when combined with MTR Standard and Advanced. Examples include support for threat neutralization, remediation, and direct call-in help.

On Sophos’ website, a detailed product and feature breakdown is accessible. Pricing is determined by the user and varies depending on the edition. However, it can be as little as $20 per user per year. Business-grade licenses and services from the company are offered through MSPs and resellers.

Best tools for advanced threat protection: Zscaler

A cloud-based malware prevention engine with AI and machine learning, Zscaler Cloud Sandbox was created to intercept new threats and shield all your employees, no matter where they are. It runs inline and inspects all of your traffic, including encrypted information, as opposed to operating in TAP mode, before sending any suspicious files. It continuously detects and stops new and changing threats as they develop, thanks to always-on zero-day protection, ransomware prevention, and real-time visibility into malware activities.

Zscaler automatically calculates a PageRisk Index for each Web page served, which considers the usage of suspect tactics like JavaScript obfuscation and zero-pixel graphics and links it with other criteria like website location and reputation to compute a risk score. The resulting score can then be used to determine whether to “allow or block” the page or even a specific page object by comparing it to a predetermined risk threshold. The user experience is not slowed down in any way, as all of this is done instantly.

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Best tools for advanced threat protection: Fortinet

Fortinet Endpoint and Remote User Protection, aimed at SMBs, combines endpoint detection and response with patching and vulnerability scanning, VPN protection to safeguard users, networks, and data, including on-premises systems and cloud-based applications, and multifactor authentication defense. The company’s FortiClient software performs automatic scans, remotely applies updates and guards against dangers from unpatched vulnerabilities.

Additional Fortinet capabilities, like exploit prevention, web filters, automatic quarantining and patching activities, and sandboxing features, strengthen the defenses of the enterprise-grade ML endpoint protection engine. The Fortinet Endpoint solution, which is a component of the larger Fortinet Security Fabric cyberdefense array, also offers FortiSandbox functionalities, both on-premises and as a platform-as-a-service alternative.

Fortinet Endpoint and Remote User Protection can be licensed and deployed in a variety of ways with a variety of configurations, all of which have an impact on price. It is compatible with Windows, Macs, and Linux, as well as public cloud applications on Amazon and Microsoft Azure. Several merchants and partners are selling the product.

Best tools for advanced threat protection: Google

To enjoy Google’s tightest account security, sign up for the Advanced Protection Program.

Anyone who is at a high risk of targeted internet attacks should use advanced threat protection. This applies to all individuals whose Google Accounts hold priceless data or sensitive information, such as journalists, activists, political campaign workers, company executives, IT administrators, and others.

To better protect your Google data, such as emails, documents, contacts, or other private Google data, Advanced Protection requires security keys at sign-in. Without your security key, even if a hacker gets your login and password, they cannot sign in.

Tip: When logging into a computer, browser, or another device for the first time, you must have your security key. If you continue to be logged in, you might not be prompted to provide your security key the following time you log in.

Downloads are subject to additional tests by Advanced Protection. It alerts you or prevents the download when a file that can be hazardous is being downloaded. Only apps from trusted retailers are permitted on your Android phone.

Advanced protection restricts access to your Google Account data to only Google apps and approved third-party apps in order to prevent illegal access.

Additionally, Advanced Protection prevents hackers from accessing your account by pretending to be you. If someone tries to recover your account, Advanced Protection goes above and beyond to confirm your identity.

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Best tools for advanced threat protection: BitDefender

The programs and processes that are now executing on your computer are continuously monitored by Bitdefender Advanced Threat Defense. It keeps an eye out for unusual behavior, including moving files into crucial Windows operating system folders, starting up multiple instances of the same process, modifying the Windows registry, or installing drivers.

Every procedure is given a score, and each action is given a danger score. When a process’s overall score exceeds a certain level, Bitdefender decides to stop that program, which, 99% of the time, turns out to be malware. The amount of false positive detections is very low and threat detection, especially for very recent attacks, is quite successful due to the score-based rating system.

Conclusion

You could hardly be more mistaken if you believe that only large companies are prime targets for cyberattacks and that you cannot possibly be one of them. Anyone with internet access who is not vigilant enough could easily become a victim. Learning the importance of cybersecurity is the first step you can take to protect your data and digital assets because connected devices are easy targets.

A recent Cowen survey reveals that businesses are showing increased adoption of cloud computing. Leaders Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure also continue to control majority of the public cloud market.

Organizations are also looking to benefit from increased cloud adoption. Design software giant Adobe’s Q2 earnings report showed 27 percent growth. Its cloud-based services continue to contribute to the company’s growth with its Creative Cloud division leading the charge raking in $1.01 billion in Q2. Adobe ditched its perpetual licensing model for its design applications for a subscription-based model in 2013. While Adobe inked a partnership with Microsoft to use Azure to power its main services, Adobe still continues to use AWS and its own infrastructure.

More organizations are also shifting business functions such as communication and sales and marketing toward cloud-based services which now prompt software-as-a-service providers to invest more in partnering with AWS and Azure for their additional infrastructure needs. Companies such as Salesforce and Sitecore rely on the public cloud to augment their data centers.

In addition, niche players offering specialized features such as virtual labs for use in sales demos and proofs of concept and development and test workflow automation are also getting attention from independent software developers. The survey covered 551 SMEs, mid-market, and enterprise organizations.

Here are some key insights from the Cowen survey.

Cloud adoption on the rise

Public cloud adoption by companies of all sizes is on the rise and companies are set to spend more on cloud resources in 2017. Companies are expected to spend 16 percent more in 2017 compared to last year. SMBs and mid-market customers are seen to scale up their spending by 18 and 17 percent respectively while enterprises will have a more conservative 13 percent increase.

Adoption is being fueled by the need for a scalable infrastructure to support an evolving workload. Currently, 18 percent of workloads are currently supported by public cloud and 77 percent of businesses are likely to add more software-as-as-service (SaaS) workloads.

AWS and Azure dominate

Continuing their dominance of the public cloud market are AWS and Azure. AWS continues to be popular with the SMB segment while Azure retains its appeal to enterprise customers.

AWS and Azure led all providers in the survey’s ease-of-use criteria. AWS led in user interface, API complexity, and reporting and billion. Azure led in management and monitoring, software and data integration, technical support, and training and documentation.

These findings seek to affirm Gartner’s recently released 2017 Magic Quadrant for cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). AWS and Azure continue to occupy the “leaders” quadrant mainly due to their position in the market. Niche players, however, are also making headway in the market largely enabled by specific use cases demanded by customers.

Sales and marketing move to the cloud

As the Cowen survey indicates, companies are looking to move business functions such as testing and developing, web hosting, and e-mail and communications functions to SaaS. Other specialized business functions such as sales and marketing workflows are also being transitioned to the cloud.

Adobe Marketing Cloud has become the company’s second biggest division next to Creative Cloud accounting for 27 percent of revenue. Adobe’s digital marketing platform is composed of marketing and analytics solutions and enjoys wide use among sales and marketing organizations especially with increased mobile adoption by consumers.

Enterprise apps like CRMs and marketing automation are now available as cloud-based services and many of these SaaS companies use either AWS or Azure for their public cloud infrastructure. For example, popular CRM Salesforce partnered with AWS as its preferred public cloud infrastructure provider. The Salesforce deal earned AWS $400 million. Microsoft may have its own enterprise applications for sales and marketing in Microsoft Dynamics but is also known to partner with other developers such as Sitecore and Act-On.

It is with these partnerships that contribute to AWS and Azure’s growth.

Room for niche players

Still, organizations may require different approaches to their infrastructure specific to their contexts. For instance, ISVs are now looking to streamline their workflows using approaches like DevOps. Such approaches need special automation and integration features built on top of the infrastructure layer. As such, niche providers have started to figure in Gartner’s quadrant. Providers like Oracle (through Ravello) and Skytap offer virtual labs that cater to specialized requirements.

ISVs start to face short and more frequent release cycles thus the need for a capable cloud infrastructure. Other cloud-based virtual lab providers like CloudShare provide solutions to cover development and testing, sales demos, and virtual training through cloud-based virtual labs. Using such an infrastructure, ISVs can readily transition from one phase of the business process to the next. This helps reduce the friction among developers, sales and marketing, and training teams.

In a recent DevOps talk, CloudShare R&D VP Muly Gottlieb illustrated how the major cloud providers have limited capabilities in addressing such needs out-of-the-box. Functionalities such as use of templates for environments configured as part of complex topologies and integration of tools and scripts to automate processes are only made available by niche and premium providers.

Time for the next wave of cloud services?

The Cowen survey also showed that while AWS still leads the market in terms of size by a considerable margin, Azure appears to be building a loyal following. Only 37 percent of Azure customers are expected to add or replace their vendors in the next two years compared to 53 percent of AWS.

These may suggest that customers are now open to trying out a variety of providers to build their ideal infrastructure. AWS enjoys the luxury of being first to market but now that cloud has hit the mainstream and with enterprise as the more lucrative segment, players like Microsoft are now showing their savvy.

Requirements are also evolving which opens up opportunities for premium turnkey services that serve specialized use cases. At least in these segments, niche providers can challenge giants like AWS and Azure.

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Introduction

It wasn’t that long ago that the idea of a network-connected device that fit in your pocket was novel and futuristic. Things change quickly, however, and today’s IT professional not only has to assume that every user is connected in real-time, but be prepared for every electronic device to be autonomously connected as well. This so-called “Internet of Things (IoT)” heralds the next big step in networking, computing, and big data analysis.

As always in the fast-paced world of IT, you must look ahead to plan for and develop the skill set you need to maintain relevance in the marketplace. It’s not enough today to have a strong background and experience in a single area of technology and development; you need to demonstrate that you understand and can thrive in the new reality of IoT.

This means developing an understanding of network communication, public cloud computing services, and big data storage and analysis. By focusing on these areas you can confidently assert that you are ready to handle the challenges and opportunities that the IoT brings.

Network Communication

It’s the first challenge you’re going to run into when building and designing around the IoT: How do all of these “things” talk to each other, and to your central processing systems? It’s no small feat, especially when you consider the sheer number and potentially small size of the devices you want to network.

What physical communication channel will the devices use? For devices that run over Ethernet or Wi-Fi (802.11), the ever popular IPv4 standard may be your safest bet. But depending on the number of devices and the size of your addressing pool (Are all of your things connected directly to the public Internet? Maybe!), you will want to understand IPv6 — which is quickly becoming a standard for addressing the IoT. CompTIA’s Network+ certification is an ideal starting point for developing the TCP/IP credentials that you’ll need to support implementations such as this.

Your devices will not always have the space and power to support a network interface such as Wi-Fi, however. As they get smaller and cheaper, innovative solutions are required to meet the engineering requirements that you’re aiming for. Radio Frequency (RF) has recently experienced a resurgence as a popular communication technology with the adoption of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard for wireless communication. Wireless Sensor Networks often implement this standard due to its focus on efficient power consumption and small space requirements. Industry alliances such as ZigBee and Z-Wave offer standards and certifications for 802.15.4 devices.

While those two options may be the most popular, you’ll also need to at least consider a wide host of alternatives. Will your IoT network utilize Bluetooth for short-distance high bandwidth applications or maybe a more traditional wired Ethernet network? Your implementation might range from small scale (line-of-sight infrared) to the largest of scales (satellite communication), so be prepared to be flexible and engaged when it comes to communications technologies.

Cloud Computing

There’s probably no area in IT that has not been upended by the explosion of cloud computing during the past five years. The realization of practical IoT is due in no small part to this innovation. Cloud computing, especially the public shared-infrastructure offered by large companies such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, enables global communication and dynamic scale for any organization of any size and budget. Having this computing power at our fingertips is enabling the IoT to grow at pace unconstrained by the limitations of a more traditional on-premise data center.

It’s not enough to have a bunch of interconnected devices. You also need a way to manage their deployment, functionality, and configuration. Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the name for a popular and growing element of cloud computing, where the entire physical infrastructure and software platform is managed and controlled by the third party provider. Technology such as Amazon’s Elastic Beanstalk, Google’s App Engine, and Microsoft’s App Service all provide a fast deployment platform for developers of all types. This means your devices have a place to be centrally managed from that doesn’t require a large lead time for development or build out.

Microsoft, in particular, has taken the lead on this with the recent release of its “Azure IoT Services” package. Azure IoT creates a single service platform that encapsulates a variety of important services such as Event Hubs, a pub/sub pattern event ingestor with dramatic scalability, and Stream Analytics for real-time processing of the data contained in those events.

All three of the major vendors in this space provide opportunities to learn about and achieve certification for their cloud platform services. Microsoft recently released their Azure Solutions Architect MCSD course, Google is in the process of rolling out their CP300 qualification exams, and of course the ever popular Amazon Web Services has a variety of certifications.

Big Data

While not unique to IoT, Big Data may not be more relevant to any other sector. The promise of a million devices with a million messages creates a stream of information and data that could frighten even the hardiest of data veterans. As devices are deployed to capture the finest grained details of our everyday lives, terabytes, or even petabytes of data, are not an unreasonable expectation. Fortunately, the industry has recognized the need to support Big Data in a “big” way and there are tools ready to handle the complexity.

First and foremost when it comes to considerations is how to organize and store all of the information coming from your things. Traditionally-structured relational databases tend to fall apart or become unwieldy and expensive when dealing with this volume of data. Database solutions such as Cassandra, HBase, and the very popular MongoDB allow for dynamic schemas and low-latency I/O on a massive scale. Combine solutions such as those with Hadoop for distributed processing and the fear of large datasets dissipates. It can pay off in a big way to learn about and be prepared to work with distributed, dynamically-schema’ed NoSQL database systems.

The cloud service providers we discussed earlier have a lot to offer in this area as well. Designing and building the infrastructure and platform to host this data is an expensive proposition. Just as with the application services they offer, data services in the cloud remove the upfront cost and lead time associated with building a data storage solution. Google’s BigQuery is a notable example because of its low cost, high performance, and familiar SQL-like querying language. You can stream or batch data into BigQuery for real-time analysis in a native platform that doesn’t require any additional licensing or system configuration. If you need to migrate from an existing on-premise Big Data solution, you have many choices as well. Microsoft offers their HDInsight tool for quickly creating a Hadoop deployment on Azure, while Amazon’s Elastic MapReduce creates an EC2 cluster for Hadoop or Spark and Presto.

Conclusion

The Internet of Things is not coming, it’s already here. You might not always recognize it right away, but the applications are vast and tightly integrated within our lives. Wristbands monitor our health and activity levels. That data is reported to our phones and then uploaded to cloud services on the public internet. Home automation for remote security and climate control has become very popular the past few years. Distributed networks of sensors on critical transportation infrastructures such as bridges and railways deliver (via satellite) up-to-the-second data and analysis to help keep us safe. The growth of IoT is expected to reach into the trillions by 2019, and double the size of the smartphone and tablet market.

The areas of expertise we’ve covered highlight the rich variety of technical expertise that IoT encompasses. There’s network communication for understanding how the things will talk to one another, cloud services for building dynamic and scalable solution platforms to manage the things, and big data analytics to corral and understand the large volume of data produced by the things. These highlights don’t even begin to paint the entire picture. On the front end of IoT, mobile and web app development is a key component for creating management solutions. On the back side, it’s easy to see how statistical analysis packages such as SAS or R can be critical to mining the data. While no one person can know all of this all of the time, it’s clear that being able to speak to fields that we’re not proficient in will be critical.

Honing your skills to deal with this incredible growth will be crucial to remaining hirable and employable in IT during the next few decades. So understanding and being fluent in the variety of IoT topics should be on all of our minds — and a focal point for our learning plans beginning today.

Ben Finkel has worked in software development for 18 years within a variety of industries, including banking/finance, insurance, and healthcare. Before joining CBT Nuggets, he was a software engineer at M&T Bank in Buffalo, New York. He is a Google Certified Trainer. When he’s not creating CBT Nuggets training videos, Ben considers himself a hobbyist programmer and likes learning new development technologies.

(image credit: Norlando Pobre)

Azure DocumentDB, Microsoft’s fully managed NoSQL document database service that was first previewed mid last year, is now generally available, the software giant revealed Wednesday.

The latest offering addresses the growing demands for mobile first, cloud first application development, wrote the Director of Program Management, DocumentDB, John Macintyre, in a blog post making the announcement.

“NoSQL databases are becoming the tool of choice for many developers however running and managing these databases can be complicated and costly, especially at scale. DocumentDB is delivered as a fully managed database-as-a-service (DBaaS) with built in high availability, SQL query over indexed JSON and multi-document transaction processing,” he added.

DocumentDB allows applications to query and process JSON data at scale and comes with code samples, a query playground and lots of documentation, to enable ease of use. The DocumentDB Data Migration tool, an open source solution, helps import data from a variety of sources, including JSON files, CSV files, SQL Server, MongoDB and existing DocumentDB collections, Macintyre says. The migration tool source code is available on GitHub.

The release is available for purchase, in three options, wherein each comes with “reserved performance, hourly billing and 99.95% availability.”

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