Connecting IoT devices to AWS Kinesis and Microsoft Azure
Written by: Soracom Team
Published: November 16, 2016
2016–01–27
We announced our new SORACOM Funnel service (public beta) today (27 January 2016) at SORACOM Conference “Connected”. This is our fourth new service following Canal, Direct and Endorse.
The story behind SORACOM Funnel
SORACOM Funnel has its roots in a SORACOM Beam user issue. SORACOM Beam takes over encryption processes performed by devices and stores authentication information in the server. With protocol conversion, Beam can also reduce communication traffic and supplement it with IMSI (SIM ID) and IMEI (device information) information to your server. Please review our SORACOM Beam Service Introduction page for more information.
It can be convenient to use an SDK supported by various APIs and platforms when transmitting data to cloud resources. In the case of a Stevenson screen installed at Necchu Elementary School in Yamagata Prefecture, an AWS SDK was used to send data from the installed device to AWS. The default endpoint for an AWS SDK is set to AWS, which means that to use SORACOM Beam there was a need to modify the AWS SDK so that data could be transmitted to a SORACOM Beam endpoint.
If one was using the SDK, it was difficult to use protocol conversion. We wondered if there was a more convenient way…and pushing our thinking about SORACOM Beam a step further, asked ourselves, “What if we created a dedicated endpoint that transmits data to cloud resources?” SORACOM Funnel was born from ideas exchanged between our engineers.
What SORACOM Funnel can achieve
SORACOM Funnel is a data-transfer service compatible with specific cloud resources. It currently works with three types of cloud resources: AWS Kinesis Streams, AWS Kinesis Firehose and Microsoft Azure Event Hubs.
You will be ready to transmit data just by setting the destination information from your user console or API. Safely store credentials for connection and API keys with our new API: Store Authentication Data.
SORACOM Funnel takes over the data-transfer to cloud resources element, meaning you don’t need to install SDKs on your devices. Freed from authentication information and SDKs, it enables scaling back on device resources more so than possible with SORACOM Beam.
SORACOM Funnel is compatible with HTTP, TCP and UDP protocols.
Please consult our SORACOM Funnel Service Introduction page for more information.
Price
As with SORACOM Beam, Funnel fees are structured in a pay-per-use basis depending on the number of requests. We are offering it for free until the end of February, so please take this opportunity to try it for yourself. Please review the SORACOM Funnel Usage Pricing for more information.
