Alternatives to Google Cloud IoT Core
- 18 Aug 2022
Google announces the end of the IoT Core service
Official on the Google Cloud website, GCP IoT services will be ended on August 16, 2023 (IoT Core: fully managed cloud service that allows you to easily and securely connect, manage and ingest data from connected objects). Some news websites are picking up on the news, which seems surprising after only 5 years of service (service launched in 2017 in beta). The official position of The Mountain View firm is that the ecosystem and partners offer more advanced services.
In fact, Google Cloud's U.S. competitors, namely AWS and Azure, have much more advanced IoT service suites. Azure's IoT Hub offers a wide range of services for IoT and outperforms GCP in this area. Cloud IoT champion AWS, on the other hand, offers a comprehensive IoT suite ranging from embedded systems (FreeRTOS, Greengrass), through device management services (FleetWise, DeviceManagement), industry-related services (SiteWise, TwinMaker, Lora, 5G) to data processing services (Analytics, Events).
Other players, both proprietary and open source, are also very effective in this respect.
Which strategy to adopt for current GCP IoT Core users?
At Smile, we offer three for your migration:
The first consists in migrating IoT GCP services to AWS. There is little GCP functionality that AWS cannot cover with the managed services of its IoT suite. The skills acquired on GCP can be transferred to AWS at low cost. Our teams will be able to assist you in this migration, whether it be in the strategy to be implemented, the architectures to be deployed, the implementation of services or the management of the solution. Good to know: Smile is qualified to deliver "AWS IoT Core Delivery".
The second is one of Smile Group's specialties: using open-source solutions to create your custom solution. We propose the use of connectivity services (such as MQTT, CoAP, or others based on open-source solutions such as RabbitMQ for example), NoSQL databases such as InfluxDB. The scalability of the whole being ensured thanks to a Kubernetes cluster. The whole thing can still run on your favorite cloud provider.
A third way would be to implement a hybrid architecture with the best of both worlds mentioned above to meet your needs and constraints (a compromise between cost, implementation complexity and strategic choice to adopt the Cloud).
So there is no reason to panic about this announcement. Just make the right decisions and call on a quality partner to accompany you in this transition.
