Google losing to AWS and Azure for cloud IoT platforms

NEWSBYTE Developers are favouring AWS and Azure to create cloud-based IoT platforms, according to a developer survey by the Eclipse Foundation. But Google’s Cloud Platform is failing to gain traction in the marketplace.

The organisation’s fourth annual IoT developer survey found that 52 percent of developers cited AWS as their IoT cloud platform of choice, followed by 31 percent for Microsoft Azure. Google’s Cloud Platform was a long way behind on just 19 percent, an eight percent year-on-year decrease from 2017.

Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) is the protocol of choice for IoT messaging, found the survey, but the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) is increasingly being used by companies as both IoT deployments and backend systems scale.

The survey found that the use of HTTP is declining (at 54 percent), to the benefit of the more lightweight and versatile HTTP/2 (25 percent, against 17 percent last year). XMPP (on four percent) is one of the protocols that seems to be losing in the consolidation battle, with a continued decline since 2016.

IoT dominated by open source software

The survey showed that 93 percent of the databases and data stores used in IoT projects are based on open source software. It also showed that the data collected and used by IoT applications is incredibly diverse, ranging from time series sensors to device information and data from log files.

While time series data is the most common form collected by IoT applications, traditional relational databases (namely MySQL, with a clear leading position at 45 percent) are still widely used. Classic DBMS such as Oracle or Microsoft’s SQL Server, however, are only mentioned by two or one percent of respondents, respectively.

The trend towards open source software is also evident in the operating systems used. At 93 percent, Linux is top when it comes to IoT devices, gateways, or cloud backends, said the Eclipse report.

While Amazon took over the FreeRTOS operating system only a few months before the survey, it has already seen a significant increase in use: up to 20 percent so far in 2018, compared with 13 percent in 2016. This makes it the leading embedded IoT OS, followed by ARM Mbed on nine percent and Contiki with seven percent.

In terms of Linux distributions – and as Raspberry Pi remains a popular platform for IoT prototyping – Raspbian (43 percent) remains top of the list, followed by Ubuntu (on 40 per cent).

• Percentages have been rounded up or down to the nearest whole figures from the survey.

Internet of Business says

Amazon’s growing dominance inside the Internet of Things is a hidden story in its rise to become the second most valuable company in the world, behind Apple. While its diversification into AI, automation, content, subscription services, vertical markets, home security, and deliveries may have grabbed the headlines, its dominance in Web services, and now in IoT development platforms, means that rivals such as Walmart – the world’s leading retailer, and the world’s number one company by revenue – have a tough act to follow.

Behind every Alexa-powered device in the home, for example, lies an integrated retail, Web services, fulfilment, and delivery platform – and one that increasingly links to a world of connected devices. Outside of China, at least, that’s a compelling proposition – and one that may be too complex for competition authorities to grapple with.

But while integration is one thing, transparency will be quite another as increasing numbers of organisations find that they have to not only interface with Amazon’s systems, but also compete for the mega-corporation’s attention, and that of its algorithms.