Dallas and Redmond, Washington, Sept. 23, 2020: AT&T and Microsoft will team up to enable enterprises to “seamlessly connect machines and equipment to the Cloud with highly secure network connectivity across the globe.”
Microsoft said in a press release that as part of the initiative, AT&T was working with Microsoft to deliver an integrated IoT solution with Azure Sphere. This AT&T powered device with Azure Sphere will help businesses transform their operations quickly through massive IoT deployments at scale.
The new solution combines the secured architecture of Azure Sphere, a “comprehensive” IoT security solution including hardware, OS and Cloud services with Azure IoT services and the global and multi-layered security of AT&T’s core network.
The AT&T global SIM enables connectivity in more than 200 countries across 500 carriers. AT&T offers managed services to support day-to-day operations. The guardian device is easy to install and provides an end-to-end solution for connecting machines and equipment to the cloud, bypassing the need for public Internet.
The Microsoft and AT&T solution provides fast and highly secure activation right out of the box. It enables enterprises to easily connect existing equipment to the Cloud and to Azure IoT Central. With this, a wide variety of industries can rapidly deploy IoT applications relying on the combined security benefits of the AT&T cellular network with Azure Sphere device security.
Think of fast food restaurants, coffee shops, elevators, hospitals, manufacturing plants and the ability to retrofit existing equipment into “smart” devices that are digitally enabled through highly secure cellular connections. Customers can connect their devices and machines to their own cloud environment without the need to connect to a Wi-Fi through a third party network connection that may not meet their high security standards.
“Our work with AT&T is a prime example of how the convergence of secure cloud computing and network technology helps businesses unlock new customer value and continuously simplify every aspect of our personal and professional lives,” said Corey Sanders, corporate Vice President, Microsoft Solutions in a written statement.