What are the features of Alibaba Cloud IoT Platform - IoT Platform

Instance management

IoT Platform offers public instances and Enterprise instances for device ingestion and business management. For more information, see Overview of instances.

Feature

Description

Public instance

After you activate IoT Platform, a trial public instance is provided by default. Public instances run in the Alibaba Cloud classic network.

Enterprise instance

Purchased instances are Enterprise instances. They run in an Alibaba Cloud VPC. An Alibaba Cloud account can purchase multiple Enterprise instances.

For more information about instance types, see Differences between types of Enterprise instances.

IoT Platform provides staging and production environments for instance management. This helps you separate devices that connect to IoT Platform across different environments. For more information, see Set instance environments.

The following sections describe the features of IoT Platform. For a comparison of features available in each instance type, see Differences between public and Enterprise instances.

Device ingestion

IoT Platform supports large-scale device connections to the cloud and ensures stable, reliable bidirectional communication between devices and the platform.

Feature	Description
Download device-side SDKs	Provides open source device-side code for multiple platforms and cross-platform porting guidance. This helps enterprises connect devices on various platforms. It also provides device-side software development kits (SDKs) to help different devices easily connect to Alibaba Cloud.
Device security authentication	Provides a chip-level secure storage solution (ID²) and a device secret management mechanism to prevent device secrets from being compromised. Offers a very high level of security. Provides X.509 certificate-based device authentication. Supports cloud gateway devices that use X.509 certificates for authentication. Offers a very high level of security. Provides device-specific certificate authentication to reduce the risk of device compromise. Suitable when you can pre-assign device certificates (ProductKey, DeviceName, and DeviceSecret) in batches and burn them onto each device chip. Offers a high level of security. Provides product-specific certificate authentication. Devices are pre-burned with product certificates (ProductKey and ProductSecret) and dynamically obtain device certificates (ProductKey, DeviceName, and DeviceSecret) during authentication. Suitable for mass production scenarios where device certificates cannot be burned onto each device. Offers a standard level of security.
Message communication topics	Provides product and device topics for communication. This simplifies communication management between devices and the server and streamlines authorization operations.
Use MQTT, CoAP, and HTTPS protocols	Provides device-side SDKs for multiple protocols. These SDKs support both the real-time requirements of persistent connections and the low-power needs of short-lived connections.
Cloud-to-cloud connection	Provides a cloud-to-cloud connection SDK to quickly build bridging services. This establishes a bidirectional data channel between devices and Alibaba Cloud IoT Platform.
Cloud Gateway	Quickly connect devices that use China Telecom NB-IoT, open source MQTT, JT/T 808, GB/T 32960, and SL 651 protocols.

Message communication

IoT Platform lets you configure rules for message synchronization, transformation, filtering, and storage to manage communication between devices, servers, and the platform.

Feature	Description
Server-side subscription	Subscribe to one or more types of messages from all devices under a product. Your server-side can receive the subscribed messages through an AMQP client or a Simple Message Queue (formerly MNS) client.
Data Forwarding	IoT Platform forwards specified fields from messages in a specific topic to a destination for storage and processing, based on the data forwarding rules you configure. For a comparison of data forwarding solutions, see Comparison of data forwarding solutions. For information about data forwarding destinations, see: Forward data using SQL statements. Forward data using parser scripts.
Scene orchestration	Configure simple rules to forward device data to other devices, enabling device-to-device interaction.
RRPC communication	Provides two communication modes, revert-RPC (RRPC) and Pub/Sub, to meet your needs in different scenarios. Pub/Sub is a message routing model based on topics.
Broadcast communication
Data compression	Compresses data transmitted between devices and IoT Platform to save device traffic and increase transmission speed.

Device management

Feature	Description
Thing Specification Language model	Provides a device Thing Specification Language (TSL) model to simplify application development.
Message parsing	Supports transmitting device messages to your server in binary pass-through mode. Device data is not saved, which ensures data security and control.
Tags	Classify and manage devices across different products.
Device groups	Classify and manage devices across different products.
Advanced search	Use SQL-like statements to quickly search for devices that meet specified conditions.
Device emulator	Simulate a real device to establish a connection with IoT Platform. Use simulated data to test communication and locate issues.
Device shadow	Provides a device shadow caching mechanism that decouples devices from applications and addresses unreliable communication over unstable wireless networks.
File management	Upload files to Alibaba Cloud IoT Platform for storage. You can also download and delete files in the IoT Platform console.
NTP service	Allows resource-constrained embedded devices to obtain server-side time in real time.
Gateways and sub-devices	Manage sub-devices, the topological relationships between sub-devices and gateways, and perform monitoring and O&M for sub-devices.
Device distribution	Distribute devices across regions, instances, and accounts to reduce device ingestion costs.

DataService Studio

Feature	Description
Data ingestion	Configure data ingestion to prepare device data for further analysis and use. Data can be ingested from device data sources, cloud product data sources, API data sources, locally uploaded data sources.
Data parsing	Use function nodes to pre-process data from IoT instance topics and API data sources.
Data storage	Store hot and cold data from devices for further use and analysis. Hot data storage: Includes TSL model data (properties, services, and events) reported by devices and custom topic data configured through hot data storage rules. Cold data storage: Includes platform system tables, time series/snapshot tables, and custom storage tables.
Data Metric	Manage preset and custom data metrics. Use these metrics for visual analytics to discover value, optimize configurations, and improve business efficiency.
Analysis and insights	Provides SQL-based analysis capabilities. You can analyze device cold data or perform association analysis on imported industry and business data. You can also write SQL statements, configure query execution policies, and schedule output to custom storage tables for further data mining.
Data APIs	Call preset metric APIs, product data APIs, or custom service APIs to retrieve data. This enables system-level integration between your server and IoT Platform.

Monitoring and O&M

Feature	Description
Real-time monitoring	Perform real-time monitoring and set Cloud Monitor alerts for metrics related to devices, messages, TSL models, and the rules engine.
O&M statistics	Provides device statistics, operating condition statistics, and event statistics to help you quickly understand and analyze all your devices from multiple perspectives.
Device diagnostics	Provides intelligent O&M services based on device operational data. These services help you analyze and diagnose device faults, detect potential risks, and predict business anomalies.
Online debugging	Send instructions from the IoT Platform console to a device to debug device-side features.
Log service	Displays IoT Platform logs and on-premises device logs to help you locate issues and perform fault analysis.
OTA update	Enables over-the-air (OTA) update capabilities for devices.
Device tasks	Simultaneously initiate property settings, asynchronous service invocations, custom topic messages, and custom tasks for multiple devices.
Remote Configuration	Remotely update device configuration online, such as system parameters and network parameters.

Server-side development guide

IoT Platform provides Server-side SDKs for Java, Python, PHP, .NET, and Go, along with Cloud APIs. These tools help developers access server-side capabilities such as product management, device management, topic management, data forwarding, and message communication.

Note

The regions and instance types supported by each IoT Platform API are the same as those supported by the corresponding feature in the IoT Platform console.