Providing Windows 10 compatibility to make OEM clients competitive

Designed to propel IoT advancement, Windows 10 IoT offers a range of features and tools that allow device OEMs to quickly build powerful and connected devices for their customers. By making its products Windows 10 ready, DFI can better assist device OEMs across retail, manufacturing, healthcare, government, and other vertical sectors to develop and deploy IoT solutions.

Microsoft released three versions of Windows 10 IoT, each targeting at different user groups and for different application scenarios. These options give device OEMs added flexibility to choose the platform that best addresses their unique requirements. Whereas Windows 10 IoT Enterprise fits automation, digital signage, kiosk, ATM, and medical applications, Windows 10 IoT Mobile Enterprise is optimised for handheld devices, such as mobile point-of-sales units or barcode scanners. Last but not least, Windows 10 IoT Core is meant to target single-purpose, low-power devices such as micro-kiosks or IoT gateways.

Windows 10 enables the creation of Universal Windows apps and drivers that run seamlessly on a broad range of devices –from compact, simple handheld POS units to larger, more sophisticated industrial robots. Moreover, all IoT functions of these devices can be deployed and managed in one development environment, Visual Studio. Since Windows 10 eliminates the redundancy of having to write separate apps and device drivers for every Windows version, developers can streamline development process and direct resources to mission-critical operations.

Windows 10 offers native support for the open-source AllJoyn, a unified protocol that all IoT devices can use to communicate and share functions. Windows 10 is also designed to work with Azure IoT Suite, which is a bundle of cloud based tools and services, to support secure device-to-cloud and cloud-to-device and connections. It makes monitoring, managing, and analysing data generated from assets within a network much easier. The essence of IoT is 'connectedness'; with AllJoyn and Azure IoT Suite, such connectedness on the device-level and network-level is made possible.