Amazon launches AWS IoT, a cloud service for Internet of Things data

Amazon Web Services today announced AWS IoT, a new service companies can use to hook up with Internet-connected devices and build applications based on them.

Until this point, working with devices, networks, security, and data collection for Internet of Things (IoT) applications has been difficult, Amazon chief technology officer Werner Vogels said at the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas today.

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A feature called Device Shadows will “make it easy for you to actually control your devices without having to have the specific knowledge of how to communicate with that device,” Vogels said.

AWS IoT also comes with a device registry, a rules engine, and a publish-subscribe Device Gateway feature that supports the MQTT protocol, AWS executive Matt Wood said during a presentation on the new tool. There are new C and JavaScript software development kits and an Arduino library to help developers work with the service.

Not surprisingly, AWS is emphasizing how much AWS IoT can be connected up with many other AWS services, including S3, DynamoDB, Amazon Machine Learning, and Lambda.

This product launch is not unexpected. Fortune reported on Monday that AWS would make an announcement of this nature.

Microsoft might have had a hint about this product launch — at its largely virtual AzureCon conference last week, Microsoft announced the availability of Azure IoT Suite, a package of existing tools that can be used to build and run applications drawing on Internet-connected devices. Beaglebone, Freescale, Intel, Raspberry Pi, Resin.io, Seeed, and Texas Instruments were onboard as launch partners for the new Azure Certified for IoT program.

Cisco, IBM, Intel, and other major tech companies have made lots of noise about the Internet of Things in the past few years. Startups have introduced products. (Amazon bought one, 2lemetry, earlier this year.) GE and Salesforce have rolled out tools for working with data from IoT systems. It’s an emerging area, and now AWS has product to sell for it.

AWS IoT is out now in beta. Pricing starts at $5 for every million messages. A full blog post has more on the new service.

Find all our coverage of AWS re:Invent here.

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Update on December 18: The service is called AWS IoT, not Amazon IoT. All references to the service have been corrected.