Iridium Communications Inc calls it the first and only satellite cloud-based solution offering truly global coverage for Internet of Things (IoT) applications. This week the satellite communications giant announced that Iridium CloudConnect is up and running.
Not only that but Iridium CloudConnect is now actively serving customers over a vast area. The company says that this new service, which combines Iridium IoT capabilities with Amazon Web Services (AWS) IoT and cloud services, extends customers’ IoT reach to the more than 80 percent of the Earth that lacks terrestrial coverage.
This approach combines the Iridium network – a constellation of 66 crosslinked satellites – and AWS supporting infrastructure and services, meaning, says the company, that Iridium customers can reduce engineering time, lower fixed operating costs, and experience faster development and deployment of new IoT products and applications.
For existing AWS customers, says Iridium, CloudConnect is providing the ability to expand their current service footprint beyond terrestrial coverage, creating the opportunity for additional service offerings and improved performance through the addition of satellite connectivity.
Iridium adds that it has built a direct, private connection between its gateway and AWS, making it secure and redundant.
Iridium says that the service makes it easier to do business by translating between industry-standard cloud protocols and Iridium’s Short Burst Data service. This allows virtually any IoT device connected through the Iridium network to speak natively with AWS IoT services as well as other value-added elements available in AWS Marketplace.
Not surprisingly perhaps, Iridium says its IoT services are experiencing strong subscriber growth. Commercial IoT data subscriber numbers grew 25 percent from the third quarter of 2018 through the third quarter of 2019, to 767,000 customers.