Amazon AWS IoT Cloud Service Now Generally Available

Amazon has announced the general availability of its AWS Internet of Things offering, which allows small devices to connect to the company’s cloud platform.

Although AWS IoT was introduced as a beta offering back in October, Amazon said the full launch of the service is the company’s effort to make the cloud more IoT-friendly. The new service was designed specifically for users with small devices running on limited system resources who still need to connect to the cloud, according to AWS Chief Evangelist Jeff Barr.

Toward that end, AWS IoT features a SQL-like programming interface and lightweight communication protocols. It’s also designed to be highly scalable so that it can accommodate an ever-changing and ever-growing number of devices, to which the service assigns unique identifiers.

Amazon announced the general availability of AWS IoT on Dec. 18. It also said several companies, including Philips and Scout Alarm, are already using the service.

To be sure, bringing the cloud and IoT together basically means marrying the biggest buzzwords from 2012 and 2015, respectively (even though IoT is not actually new and neither, for that matter, is the cloud). But by focusing on technology that is actually tailored to IoT devices in a legitimate way — not just rebranding an existing cloud service by adding another buzzword to its name — Amazon seems to be doing something truly worthwhile at the intersection of IoT and the cloud.