Internet of Things - network of physical devices embedded with sensors, software, and network connectivity that collect, exchange, and act on data. Like creating a nervous system for the physical world, enabling real-time monitoring and automation of everything from industrial equipment to consumer devices.
Manufacturing facilities use IoT sensors to monitor equipment health and predict failures, while smart cities deploy IoT devices to optimize traffic flow and energy usage across thousands of connected street lights and sensors.
AWS IoT Core and Azure IoT Hub are managed device connectivity and messaging platforms (device registry, authentication, MQTT/HTTP ingestion, routing). Google Cloud IoT Core was GCP’s equivalent but was retired; on GCP, IoT solutions are typically built using Pub/Sub for ingestion plus device identity/auth patterns and partner/third-party IoT platforms. OCI does not have a single direct IoT Hub/Core equivalent; common OCI architectures use Streaming for ingestion, Functions or OKE for processing, and other services for storage/analytics.