Microsoft Connected Factory

Microsoft also lifted the curtain on a new pre-configured industrial IoT offering as part of its Azure IoT suite: connected factory.

The offering facilitates the connection of on-premise OPC unified architecture – the M2M communication protocol for industrial automation – and OPC Classic devices in the Microsoft cloud, helping customers easily get insight, securely browse and configure factory devices from the cloud.

Microsoft said that as part of its connected factory solution, it partnered with OPC unified architecture players that have built gateway solutions, including Unified Automation, Softing and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.