Google IoT Core: What to do when everything looks lost
On 16th of August, Google announced #discontinuing the #IoT #Core service. The company will retire the service in just one year. Is this the last breath of the #GCP IoT Dream??
Since 2017, GCP has been working to position the IoT Core Service as an alternative to the IoT offerings from other cloud vendors. While AWS and Azure had consolidated as the big players, GCP has managed to increase its market year by year.?
GCP IoT effort start to bear fruit when an ecosystem of services started to use Core service as the cloud entry point for the physical world. Service growth in the number of connected devices, a growth which slowed in 2021 but was expected to re-accelerate in 2022 and beyond.?
But if Core service is getting more market share, why to just kill it? The answer is simple, when we worked with the service trying to implement the client's requirements, the Core service lacked functionality that made us think that its development had already been abandoned.?
But this is not the end of the GCP IoT Dream. Just and approach shift.?
GCP has loads of services. Like any other cloud provider. But a unique focus in the data analytics approach. And the pub/sub solution can handle any kind of event-driven communication with ease. And IoT communication schema just need this kind of communication.?
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Core solution lacks device twin or other advanced IoT functionalities, but this very simple to implement using a pub/sub queue, as well as telemetry and commanding orders. You just need a queue service, no matter you are using #MQTT or Kafka schema under the hood. You only need the functionality.?So, by this side, switching from Core to Pub/sub is not going to be traumatic, even knowing that there are more libraries provided for the Pub/sub service.?
But developing an IoT solution is not only about communicating with cloud, but there are also more concerns. From using SSL certificates to involving device twin or edge schema, we need a complete all-in-one service. Or not. The use of the SSL certificates in an IoT communication is a de facto agreement. But while Core service requires the customer to set up the certificate, the service account used to communicate with pub/sub uses the same X.509 certificate. Moreover, #digitalTwins are provided by persistent queues and the cheap Cloud Functions with custom serverless logic.?
We can’t forget that even the Core service relays in the pub/sub one to trigger logic and to consume other kinds of services. So, it’s just a way to simplify communications and be more cost-efficient. Even GCP #edge service relays in pub/sub to send telemetry.?
?When we live in the fierce competition of the cloud providers, the ways to gain market share are the price and the functionality. Giving power to integrators by reducing services cost and letting them build custom solutions is a great way to fight fire with fire. GCP choose a very daring way to focus on just a bunch core services over tons of them. And its IoT dream just changed the main character. ?