What Is an IoT Platform–and Why Do You Need One?

As someone who works in the field, most customers are reluctant to commit to a platform that ties them to a single cloud. Also, an MS employee I talked to alleged that azure IoT is not selling like hot cakes, so I guess most people see this similarly.

My recommendation is to go with a cloud hosted MQTT broker, and do stuff like device configuration and edge computing over a generic config management system like ansible or salt.