Microsoft Azure IoT Plans Now Support Digital Twins

Microsoft’s multi-billion dollar IoT pledge has now sprung a twin. The computing and cloudgiant added support for the use of digital twins on its Azure IoT platform. Digital twins are software models of physical items. This allows for the ability to model and monitor a physical item in real-time without actually touching the current status of that item. At this week’s Microsoft Ignite event, the company announced that its digital twins model uses its Azure IoT Hub platform to connect IoT devices and sensors that keep the digital model up to date with the physical world. Sam George, partner director for Microsoft’s Azure IoT business, explained in a blog post that this allows users to manage the digital model using event-driven and serverless methods that can then be transferred to the physical environment. The Azure Digital Twins also integrate with Azure data and analytics services to allow users to track past actions in forming a digital model. Digital twin models are quickly scaling the hype cycle and are gaining traction in support of IoT deployments. “We’re on a steep learning curve with it [digital twin technology] now,” Marc Halpern, vice president of research for engineering and design technologies at Gartner, recently told SDxCentral. “We’re at the peak of hype with digital twins, where I think it’s going to happen and it is happening.” According to a recent Gartner survey, and noted by ZDnet, 48 percent of companies in the IoT space are using, or plan on using, digital twins by the end of this year. The research firm added that more than 50 percent of manufacturers with at least $5 billion in annual revenues will have at least one digital twin initiative in place by 2020.