Microsoft Azure IoT Central vs. Watson IoT Platform

If there is a need for a system to be developed in a short time then Azure IoT Central is the perfect option, offering a fast solution for a simple system that can be used and built upon. This is a great advantage as it skips on some details, also this is a bit of a disadvantage as most times developers want to know what they are working with.

Incentivized

As long as we have a clear understanding of the "real" pain points-- and that involves gathering both structured and unstructured data-drawing conclusions-- Watson IoT has a role to play. The area I am most keen on that a move the Watson can help achieve would be to go from preventative maintenance, to predictive maintenance, to eventually prescriptive maintenance.

Incentivized

• Creation and management of user roles, who can access your IoT resources and configure the level of access, very granular and self-explanatory
• Configuration of apps and devices, integrations, and administrations are done in an intuitive way and it's easy to navigate your way through the available settings.
• The documentation is really excellent, everything is explained succinctly and there are enough practical examples to get you started.
• Existing templates can save you a lot of time in getting your desired setup complete with less effort and time invested.

Incentivized

• The asset information is available in both static and dynamic format (from thermal images, to OEM data, to time series data). The ability to ingest all the information using a single platform has great value.
• Another benefit is a seamless integration with Maximo. This has been a challenge with other 3rd party systems available.
• The experience of IBM Maximo systems updates is positive.

Incentivized

• Lack of info on error messages
• GUI misses important configuration options
• Not well documented options inside IoT Hub for example (consumer groups)

Incentivized

• Some of the tutorials could use a little more improvement - While there is a considerable amount of documentation, most of the good documentation for Watson IoT we found to be from third-parties.
• Administration and billing tools could use a bit more improvement - The UI is a bit clunky and poorly-designed here.
• Be prepared to work with IBM support to get this going - Their turn-around support for inquiries can be lengthy, and setup time may also be quite lengthy because of this.

Incentivized

Before deciding to go with Microsoft Azure IoT Central, we considered Google, Datadog, and AWS alternatives. The reason we went with Azure was that the client was heavily invested in Microsoft technologies and Azure plays really well with other Microsoft products. The competitive products might be a little bit easier to set up, with more flexible pricing, but, the integrations with other Microsoft services were the deciding factor for our use case.

Incentivized

AWS offers an "IoT" product that similarly connects devices securely to centralize data exchange, predict downtime, and overall increase the efficiency of an IoT infrastructure. Like some of the other AWS products, the documentation is lacking and UI is quite hard to use, which is why we chose to use IBM Watson instead.

Incentivized

• Continuous and significant progress
• Integration of the product in the ongoing work and improvement of our system capacity
• Convenient interface

Incentivized

• Positive - This tool greatly increases most company's manufacturing and production efficiency, and the use-cases are extensive. It was a great way of decreasing down-time for us.
• Negative - Took lots of work and energy to get up and running, we had to rely on IBM support and tutorials many times during this process.
• Positive - Quite cheap, most of the tiers of pricing cost very little, and it's possible to use Watson IoT for a few months for free to see if it is beneficial for your company.

Incentivized