Wednesday, April 24, 2019

Microsoft Acquires Express Logic for IoT Security

Microsoft has acquired Express Logic, a leader in real time operating systems (RTOS) for IoT  and edge devices powered by microcontroller units designed to work in constrained environments where safety and security are key, said Sam George, Azure IoT director.

Express Logic’s ThreadX RTOS has over 6.2 billion deployments, making it one of the most deployed RTOS in the world, said VDC Research. RTOS is used in products using low-capacity sensors such as lightbulbs, temperature gauges for air conditioners, medical devices.

More than nine billion of these MCU-powered devices, battery powered and having less than 64KB of flash memory), are built and deployed globally every year.

Microsoft gains access to billions of new connected endpoints able to use Azure Sphere, Microsoft’s security offering in the microcontroller space.

“Our goal is to make Express Logic’s ThreadX RTOS available as an option for real time processing requirements on an Azure Sphere device and also enable ThreadX-powered devices to connect to Azure IoT Edge devices when the IoT solution calls for edge computing capabilities,” said George.


“While we recommend Azure Sphere for customers’ most secured connections to the cloud, where Azure Sphere isn’t possible in highly constrained devices, we recommend Express Logic’s ThreadX RTOS,” said George.

By 2020, Gartner predicts there will be more than 20 billion connected devices in use. In April 2018, Microsoft announced we’re investing $5 billion in IoT and the intelligent edge over the next four years.

Since then, Microsoft has adapted Azure Sphere, Azure Digital Twins, Azure IoT Edge, Azure Maps and Azure IoT Central for IoT, and struck new partnerships with DJI, SAP, PTC, Qualcomm and Carnegie Mellon University for IoT and edge app development, as well as programs to help drive the next wave of innovation for customers, George noted.

No comments:

Post a Comment