What is IoT Platform and its communication principles, features, benefits, purchase method, usage method, and related IoT services? - IoT Platform

IoT Platform is a platform that integrates various capabilities, such as device connection, device management, secure data communication, message subscription, data forwarding, and data services. Data services provide multiple capabilities, including data storage, analysis, filtering, parsing, and integration. You can connect a large number of devices to IoT Platform and collect device data to IoT Platform. You can also call IoT Platform API operations on your business server by using IoT Platform SDKs to send remote commands to devices.

Get started with IoT Platform

Learning path: describes how to configure a device and connect the device to IoT Platform.
Terms: describes the basic terms that you must understand before you use IoT Platform.
FAQ: provides answers to some frequently asked questions (FAQ) about IoT Platform.

How it works

The following figure shows the communication process among IoT Platform, devices, business servers, and clients.

Before devices can communicate with IoT Platform, you must configure devices, IoT Platform servers, databases, and mobile applications. You can use IoT Platform SDK to configure IoT Platform servers. When you configure devices and IoT Platform servers, you must define and process device messages.

The following table describes the upstream and downstream messaging between devices and IoT Platform.

Communication type	Description
Upstream communication	A device establishes a persistent connection with IoT Platform over Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT). Then, the device submits data to IoT Platform by calling the Pub operation to send payloads to a topic.
	IoT Platform forwards data to a business server by using an AMQP consumer group.
	You can use the data forwarding feature of IoT Platform to process data that is submitted by devices, and then forward the data to Alibaba Cloud services, such as ApsaraDB RDS, Tablestore, Function Compute, Time Series Database (TSDB), Lindorm, DataHub, and ApsaraMQ for RocketMQ for data storage and processing.
Downstream commands	You can send a command by using a business application. Then, your business server calls the HTTPS-based Pub operation to send the command to an IoT Platform topic.
Downstream commands	IoT Platform calls the Pub operation to send payloads to specified topics over MQTT.

For more information about device communication, see Topics.

You can use the data services of IoT Platform to integrate, store, and parse the data of IoT devices. Then, you can measure the metrics of the data, perform data analysis and insights on the data, call API operations, and configure data application for the data. This way, you can mine the data value of the IoT devices.

Features

Instance management

IoT Platform provides individual developers and enterprise users with public instances for trial use. After you activate IoT Platform, you can use the features of the service. IoT Platform provides enterprise users with IoT Platform instances. You can connect devices to the instances and manage or perform O&M tasks on the devices.
Device connection

You can connect devices that reside in multiple regions and networks, such as 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, and Wi-Fi, and devices that run on different platforms, such as C and Android to IoT Platform over multiple protocols and brokers, such as MQTT, Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP), HTTPS, and gateways. This reduces the period of time that is required to configure a device before you can connect the device to IoT Platform.
Device management

IoT Platform provides secure and reliable device management capabilities. The capabilities include device lifecycle management, advanced search, tag management, device shadowing, and device file management.

Message forwarding

You can integrate IoT Platform with multiple Alibaba Cloud services to meet your business requirements in different scenarios. The services include TableStore, ApsaraDB RDS, Lindorm, Function Compute, Message Service (MNS), and ApsaraMQ for RocketMQ. The scenarios include machine-to-machine (M2M) communication, device data storage, device data computing, and message queuing.
Data services

Data services are provided based on the characteristics of IoT data. The data services provide multiple capabilities. The capabilities include data integration, data parsing, data storage, data metrics, data analysis and insights, and data application. This way, enterprise users can mine the values of IoT data with ease.
Monitoring and O&M

IoT Platform provides the following capabilities for devices: monitoring and alerting, integrated log analysis, over-the-air (OTA) update, and smart diagnostics.

For more information about the features of IoT Platform, see Features.

Benefits

Stable connections between IoT Platform and devices
IoT Platform supports hundreds of millions of device connections and millions of concurrent messages. IoT Platform can help you defend against DDoS attacks whose peak traffic reaches 600 Gbit/s at the access layer and provides a service level agreement (SLA) of more than 99.95%.
Cost-effectiveness and nearby access for global devices
Compared with user-created MQTT clusters, IoT Platform provides more management and O&M capabilities at minimal costs. IoT Platform is available in eight primary regions around the world. This way, a device can automatically connect to the nearest region based on the location of the device.
Ease of use and scalability
IoT Platform supports the pay-as-you-go and subscription billing methods. IoT Platform can automatically scale out resources to accommodate your business growth. IoT Platform provides an integrated device management platform that monitors devices in real time. IoT Platform can seamlessly work with multiple Alibaba Cloud services. IoT Platform allows you to build complex IoT applications with ease.

For more information about the benefits of IoT Platform, see Benefits.

Scenarios

IoT Platform can be used to improve user experience when you use smart home appliances, agricultural equipment, and intelligent media devices. For more information, see Common scenarios.

Billing

IoT Platform supports the following billing methods: pay-as-you-go and subscription.

After you activate IoT Platform, a public instance is provided for trial use. Public instances of the previous version use the pay-as-you-go billing method. Public instances of the new version provide resources of fixed specifications free of charge. You can purchase subscription Enterprise Edition instances based on your business requirements.

For more information about the billable items, billing methods, and fees of IoT Platform, see Billing overview.

Activate IoT Platform

Purchase Enterprise Edition instances

Usage methods

The following table describes the methods to use IoT Platform.

Method

Description

IoT Platform console

You can access web service pages that provide interactive operations to manage your IoT Platform resources.

IoT Platform SDKs and IoT Platform API

Use an IoT Platform SDK to send a GET or POST request to the endpoint of the IoT Platform API over HTTPs or HTTP. Then, specify and configure the request parameters that are required to call an API operation based on the API reference.

OpenAPI Explorer allows you to retrieve and call API operations and dynamically generates SDK sample code.

For more information about how to use IoT Platform SDK, see Download IoT Platform SDKs.

FAQ

Category	Question
Cloud service	Am I able to use IoT Platform outside the Chinese mainland? Is IoT Platform supported in the Middle East regions? How am I charged for using IoT Platform? Am I able to use IoT Platform SDKs free of charge? How do I obtain IoT-related solutions? Am I able to grant the full permissions on IoT Platform to other Alibaba Cloud accounts? Am I able to use the IoT Platform public instances of the previous version with the Cloud Intelligence app?
Device connection	Does IoT Platform support connections only over MQTT? What hardware devices can be connected to IoT Platform? What endpoints are used by IoT Platform? Am I able to specify an IoT Platform endpoint after a custom domain name? After a device is connected to IoT Platform in the China (Shanghai) region, am I able to connect the device to IoT Platform outside the Chinese mainland? What hardware devices can be connected to IoT Platform? Does IoT Platform support SDK for C? How does IoT Platform connect to devices? After I replace the IoT network interface controller for a device, does IoT Platform prevent the device from being connected to IoT Platform?
Messaging	What are the communication types for messaging between devices and IoT Platform? How does IoT Platform store data in a MySQL or SQL Server database after a device reports data to IoT Platform? IoT Platform and ApsaraMQ for RocketMQ are used for messaging. What are the differences between IoT Platform and ApsaraMQ for RocketMQ? Do devices send messages to IoT Platform in a fixed format? Can devices send messages to applications of service vendors? What is the latency when IoT Platform forwards device messages? What about device data confidentiality in IoT Platform?
IoT Platform SDKs and IoT Platform API	Can IoT Platform generate HTTP-based operations for other platforms to call? What are the IoT Platform API operations? How do I call IoT Platform API operations? What are the common parameters of IoT Platform API operations?