Amazon Web Services Inc. is boosting its “internet of things” device management capabilities.

Today’s integration of AWS IoT Greengrass with AWS Systems Manager gives information technology administrators a simple and secure way to manage edge devices such as industrial machines and computers alongside the assets they rely on, including on-premises servers and cloud resources. The news was announced at AWS’ annual user conference, re:Invent.

AWS IoT Greengrass is an older service that was first launched in late 2016. It can be thought of as a service that extends the functionality of Amazon Web Services to IoT devices, enabling businesses to perform data collection and analysis closer to where it’s generated. With the launch of AWS IoT Greengrass 2.0 in 2020, it evolved into an open-source edge runtime and cloud service for building, deploying, and managing device software and applications.

With AWS IoT Greengrass, users can manage their edge device application stacks more easily. However, the system software on those devices still needs to be updated regularly, and that isn’t so easy.

“Administrators would typically have to build or integrate tools to create a centralized interface for managing their edge and IT device software stacks – from security updates, to remote access, and operating system patches,” AWS evangelist Sean M. Tracey explained in a blog post.

That’s no longer the case. By integrating AWS IoT Greengrass with AWS Systems Manager, admins now have an easy way to execute operating system updates, schedule maintenance tasks and remotely access edge device fleets. In other words, the integration has created a simple solution for device administrators to manage the entire device software stack.

“For example, a medical device manufacturer can use AWS IoT Greengrass to deploy and manage the applications on their device fleet, including managing software versions, testing updates, and rolling out updates over the air,” Tracey said. “They can also use AWS Systems Manager to schedule and automate operating system updates and patches, or assist customers with remote troubleshooting.”

AWS Systems Manager now provides IT admins with a single, consolidated view of their cloud, on-premises and edge infrastructure, so they can manage all of those resources via a single set of consistent operational policies. As an example, a manufacturing firm might use AWS Systems Manager to manage dozens of industrial PCs, on-premises instances on the factory floor and EC2 cloud instances from the same place.

Amazon said AWS IoT Greengrass is integrated with AWS Systems Manager in all regions where both services are available, namely its US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Europe (Ireland) and Asia Pacific (Sydney) Regions.

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