The fastest way to evaluate Azure, IoT and serverless functions

April 4, 2022 by Rich Kurtzman, Brand Communications @ Fathym

From web hosting to creating exciting developer tools and building IoT solutions, Fathym is a company which prides itself on having a lot of productive irons in the fire.

And one may wonder why we’re exploring all of these avenues at the same time.

Simply, because they all interconnect.

Our IoT Ensemble is a solution for easily compiling data for anyone who needs it. That means enterprise-level down to DIY-ers. All of that data is stored and lives on our serverless hosting with Microsoft Azure. And then the developer tools – like our cold/warm queries, easy integration with reporting tools like Power BI, and use of micro frontends – gives folks an easy way to present that data on a website.

IoT Ensemble

IoT Ensemble is our platform focused on helping you easily connect your devices.

On the enterprise level, IoT Ensemble operates as a virtual development team that automates best practices for IoT application delivery. In order to help you focus on building applications and creating value, we built the platform to augment your team’s skills and do the heavy lifting.

And for anyone, including DIY-ers, using the platform radically reduces the time and work involved in getting devices connected to the cloud. It also helps in understanding the devices’ data as well as delivering end-to-end customer driven IoT applications.

For a business, it may mean connecting manufacturing lines and individual controllers.

For a DIY-er, creating a simple temperature monitor or soil moisture monitor for your house plants is easy using a Raspberry Pi or a board from SparkFun. Then, you can use IoT Ensemble to decipher all that data and get some use out of it.

Watch how to setup your own IoT Ensemble account and get running today here.

Azure web hosting

We host all that IoT data – and others’ websites – on Microsoft Azure.

If you’re a business and you’re looking for a web host, there are a few crucial factors to consider.

First, pricing. Compared to AWS, Azure is five times less expensive.

Next, security is key. No one wants to be locked out of their own website. Microsoft boasts $1 billion-plus invested in security R&D as well as their thousands of security experts.

And finally, a business owner wants their cloud hosting to be proven. Azure is used by 95 percent of Fortune 500 companies per Microsoft’s website.

But it’s not just giant companies who use Azure, small businesses do, too. And these reasons just mentioned here are exactly why we chose Microsoft Azure as our hosting platform.

Fathym, your new web host with Microsoft Azure

At Fathym, we utilize Azure to not only host our own website, but the online presence of many small businesses as well.

However, we don’t just stop at Azure and hosting, no buddy.

Serverless functions

Thanks to us using Azure, your business will get the benefit of serverless functions.

What does that mean? First, no server management for you. That’s a huge plus.

Next, serverless means it’s a pay-as-you-go system, therefore, your developers pay for only what they need.

Also, serverless means scalability on demand. If there’s a traffic spike because you created and shared something magical, it will respond automatically and scale up. In traditional server-based architectures, huge traffic spikes can overwhelm servers and crash a site.

Serverless means quicker deployments, updates and upgrades, too because there is no origin server. Those same benefits are true when talking about micro frontends, so the two complement one another.

Micro Frontends are magic

Micro frontends means breaking a website’s front end – the part a visitor sees – into smaller pieces. The benefits of doing that are numerous.

If you have zero coding experience, you can use a static site generator like Gatsby or 11ty to name a few, and experience “building” a website much like one would in other mainstream site-builders out there today (Squarespace, Wix etc.).

If you have a bit of developing experience, you can go further as our Social UI will help you walk through the micro frontends adventure. The benefits are numerous and include: Using multiple JavaScript languages, and mixing them with SSGs, smaller teams and smaller codebases, and therefore faster website builds.

In this example, the home page (root) is built out of Plasmic, another great static site generator. The blog was created with Gatsby – possibly a headless Wordpress -- and technical documentation was done with one of our favorites, Docusaurus. Meanwhile, the admin was built in react.

But, imagine you're using micro frontends to instead display your IoT data. You can build the technical documentation out of Docusaurus, your home page out of Plasmic, but instead of a blog, maybe you want a real-time graph for the data. Or, many graphs running at once! Then, you could even have a blog that just keeps team members up to date on the happenings and findings of that IoT data.

We want you to come and build a website at Fathym today.

Our Fathym Platform is micro frontends architecture. That means freedom, customization, and an ability to flashup a website in mere minutes. Seriously.