Azure Intelligent Systems Service | Hacker News Reader

Azure Intelligent Systems Service

microsoft.com

27 pointsstreametry14 comments

Its interesting to watch all the 'we are the platform for the internet of things' services.

As a hardware startup founder, working on IoT devices, I find it interesting that so few are working on the actual IoT devices but so many are working on software to support it. It's great to see interest and it's great to have alternatives to building our cloud backends ourselves, but I would love to see more actual IoT devices actually navigating the messiness that is going from prototype to product. While this solves a problem, relative to tooling, navigating the China (or US manufacturing), and funding, the last thing we are worried about is building our backend system. Granted, our team has experience building distributed systems and full stack hardware <-> software experience...

Seems to be a ton of 'me toos' in this space and I would love to see the traction statistics they get from actual IoT device builders. Most IoT device builders fancy themselves becoming the platform instead of just an accessory...

I find it interesting that so few are working on the actual IoT devices but so many are working on software to support it.

I think you know the answer: generally, hardware is harder than software for a startup. There was a post about a hardware kickstarter project that failed: "Kickstarter project spent $3.5M to finish a prototype and ended in disaster" [1] and a list here: List of Failed Kickstarter Hardware Projects [2]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8016201

[2] http://www.kickspy.com/browse/all-failed/hardware

And not just that hardware is harder but also the IoT market is estimated at $19 trillion [1] creating a gold rush of sorts.

But yes, there is no shortage of IoT platforms (xively, dweet, nitrogen, data.sparkfun, ...) and I'm partly in involved as well. What I found interesting about the MS program is that recently they were giving away boards for you to try. So it seems they are in a position to provide the hardware and the platform.

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-08/cisco-ceo-pegs-inte...

What are you working on? I personally love this stuff, and I hit the hardware blogs as much as HN.

http://www.flair.zone

Shoot me an email if you want to chat!

I wanted to try Azure last week (still do!) but I can't register and type in my US Credit Card because I need a US phone number to validate my account.

Heroku takes my money easily. Paypal takes my money easily. Netflix takes my money easily. DigitalOcean takes my money easily. Why are you so special Microsoft?

If there is any MS employee here that can manually create and validate an account for me I would be forever greatful! I'm working on a MVC SignalR application for my senior thesis and I would like to host it on Azure instead of somewhere like Softsys Hosting.

Not in the US, but seeing as you are undertaking a thesis, I assume you are a college or university student?

If you are a student, Microsoft offer undergraduate and postgraduate Azure grants: http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/community/education/

If you are applying with a lecturer, they can request grants or passes for entire class: http://www.microsoftazurepass.com/azureu

Not sure how long it will take in each case, but I don't think they require a credit card (though there are restrictions on what you can do, so check it is suitable for your thesis first).

Good luck with your thesis!

Thanks but I doubt those would work, I cleared all of my courses years ago and I'm only recently going back to Uni to finally finish my thesis and get my degree.

Can you get a US number from http://voice.google.com and use it?

Well done on finishing your degree, great achievement.

If you are officially registered as a student, and have a student ID, it's worth a look at the grants, you may still be eligible.

Yeah that verification sucks, but for some reason (fraud, etc, etc) we require it. One thing to note is the number doesn't actually have to be yours. If you can get anyone to recieve a text and give you the code you are good. If you still have trouble send me email. ntotten@microsoft.com

I'll try to reach out to some friends stateside, thanks for the tip. :)

I also want to try Azure, but I only have a prepaid credit card (I live in Europe, don't need it except for small Internet things) and Azure is the ONLY service that doesn't accept it. AWS, Google Cloud, Netflix, etc. all work fine, except Azure.

Took me days to figure that one out, because I only got a generic "Your credit card isn't valid" error message when signing up.

I'm still trying to figure out what this service actually does.

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