One Windows to Rule Them All

...and Ninja Cat shall lead them

Unless you’ve been on an extended vacation on a remote tropical island you know Windows 10 was released on July 29.  And the hype is huge.  It’s been lauded as “the OS upgrade we’ve all been waiting for,” “the ideal next step for Microsoft,”and an evolution that everyone can agree with.

Good News For Embedded Users

The good news is the love is going to extend to those of us in the IoT community.  Simply put, if you’re an app developer in the IoT space, Windows 10 is going to change your business and your life.

One Platform. Every Device. 

The key lies in the single platform performance of Windows 10.  Until now, we’ve had the ability to connect people to things and things to business activities.  The real challenge has always been in those things.  Considering there’s darn near 5 billion connected things, it’s been a gargantuan task to make those things talk to each other.

It’s not like it was impossible.  Sure, you could find a way to make various things talk to each other, share data and deliver an integrated user experience, but it required some pretty heavy lifting.

With universal drivers, common device management and common and consistent APIs, Windows 10 is going to change all of that.

With Windows 10 you’ll be able to:

Scale your app seamlessly on any device – from the most robust industrial system to the smallest, power restricted wearable.
Make changes to an app and quickly apply them across the entire ecosystem.
Connect not only people to things and things to business systems, but things to other things, increasing the amount of valuable data.

Enterprise Ready – Maker Friendly

All of this is a win-win for developers and for users, which explains why Microsoft is touting Windows 10 as “enterprise ready – maker friendly.”  Not only can developers be faster to market, with the simplicity of Windows 10, the pool of developers is going to grow.  And users will be able to see changes more quickly, using the evolving data to make faster, better business decisions.

Big Data

Of course all that data means little until it’s transformed into information.  That’s why Microsoft is also launching the Azure IoT suite to complement Windows 10.  Your app will collect data from multiple sources, aggregate it and deliver it to Azure.  Azure then analyzes the data and presents it as a custom visualization for the end-user.  Ta-da:  data into information with just one platform.

More Secure Than Ever

Don’t worry; all of these new features didn’t come without a significant amount of focus on security, as well.  It’s no secret that hackers become more sophisticated every day.  Perimeter-only security measures simply won’t cut it.  That’s why Windows 10 has employed a layered security approach.  Here are just a few of the new security features you’ll see with Windows 10:

Device Guard: A feature that restricts a device to running only trusted apps.  Users simply can’t accidently install a dangerous application. 

• And even if a bad guy were to get his hands on your device, he couldn’t install or run malware.
• Device lockdown capabilities: You can lockdown the USB ports on any device allowing only approved USB peripherals
• Secure devices with Trusted Platform Module (TPM)

Unlimited Potential

It’s secure and it’s simple. It’s going to make your life easier, your users happy and the market better.  It’s not just hype.  Windows 10 is the real deal and it’s going to bring the Internet of Things to its full potential.