December 2025 marked ten years since AWS for Internet of Things set out to connect physical devices to cloud systems for global deployments. Over the ten years, AWS IoT has grown from its relatively simple role as providing secure message brokers and device registries into offering a portfolio of services that cover device connectivity, fleet management, edge computing, industrial data collection, video streaming, and the creation of and experimentation with digital twins.
Hundreds of millions of devices now connect to AWS IoT services in consumer, industrial, automotive, healthcare, energy, utility, and telecommunications settings .
History lesson
AWS IoT launched in 2015 with AWS IoT Core, built around an MQTT message broker that came with preset rules for routing data into other AWS services . Early customer feedback focused on state management and intermittent connectivity. Device Shadows were introduced to maintain a persistent cloud representation of device state, letting applications read and update states if devices were offline . In 2016, AWS IoT Greengrass extended the model to edge gateways and devices.
In 2017, AWS IoT Device Management added tools for onboarding and updating device fleets, and AWS assumed stewardship of FreeRTOS for devices in constrained environments . Amazon Kinesis Video Streams were also introduced later in the year, offering video ingestion from cameras used for analytics and machine learning . Fleet Indexing, launched in 2019, enabled search and aggregation across a registry’s metadata stores, and AWS IoT SiteWise was introduced to collect and structure data from multi-vertical industrial equipment .
From 2020 onwards, the focus shifted towards automation, digital twins, and making hardware integration simpler. Fleet Provisioning let manufacturers onboard devices using templates rather than manually registering each device type . AWS IoT TwinMaker, launched in 2021, created of digital representations of real-world systems for operational data analysis . In 2022, AWS IoT ExpressLink offered pre-certified hardware modules for connectivity, and AWS IoT FleetWise was targeted specifically at the needs for data collection in the automotive sector .
In 2024. AWS IoT Core added MQTT v5 support, including support for user properties and message expiry. Message enrichment was able to modify or augment device messages without users having to flash device firmware. A WebRTC SDK for Kinesis Video Streams opened up the use of camera streams to virtually any endpoint.
In March 2025, AWS launched IoT Device Management, with integrations providing ZigBee, Z-Wave, and wi-fi connections, along with more than 80 device data model templates and a catalogue of cloud-to-cloud connectors, helping users unify heterogeneous fleets .
Customer adoption over the decade happened at large scale in many sectors. Fujitsu General connected its air conditioning systems through AWS IoT Core, reporting growth in adoption and lower compute costs among its customers . Mercedes-Benz migrated vehicle connectivity workloads to AWS IoT Core to in a bid to simplify its broker infrastructure . In the same sector, Honda used AWS IoT Core and various AWS services for data collection, optimising its EV charging offerings .
AWS IoT in operations
Industrial use cases have centred on operational visibility and maintenance. Toyota uses AWS IoT SiteWise in its manufacturing facilities, reporting resulting improvements in operational availability . Bristol Myers Squibb consolidated its operational data across its sites using SiteWise to produce fewer points of reference, and INVISTA used AWS IoT TwinMaker to model physical assets and provide operational views to its staff in the field .
In supply chain and utilities contexts, organisations have used AWS IoT for smart metering, fleet tracking (in logistics), and predictive maintenance. In Amazon’s own logistics operations, AWS IoT Core supports near real-time positioning for its ubiquitous vehicles . In healthcare, Siemens Healthineers and GE Healthcare have used AWS IoT Core and Kinesis Video Streams to provide remote patient diagnostics and contactless medical monitoring . Meanwhile, in the energy sector, companies such as Siemens Energy and Greenko have used IoT data collection and analytics for equipment and renewable power generation monitoring.
Integration with other AWS services has been a consistent design principle, with many end-users opting for Amazon services as the choice offering least friction. IoT data can be routed through Amazon EventBridge, processed using AWS Glue, and queried with Amazon Athena. Machine learning workflows can use Amazon SageMaker for model training and deployment, and in 2025 customers often combined IoT data with generative AI services for deeper analysis and system automation. At the edge, deployment through AWS IoT Greengrass remains central in environments where latency or data residency constraints are present.
Partner ecosystem
More than 60 AWS IoT Competency partners, spanning semiconductor vendors, hardware manufacturers, system integrators, and software providers support implementations in multiple industries, with partners helping build domain-specific applications on AWS infrastructure.
As of the end of 2025, AWS IoT’s direction reflects two parallel trends. First, customers continue to prioritise secure device onboarding, fleet observability, and cost control. Second, there is increasing interest in embedding AI models and agent-based systems in edge environments, where devices interpret local data and act with reduced dependency on the cloud. AWS IoT Greengrass, TwinMaker and Device Management updates in 2025 indicate that AWS expects edge intelligence and cross-protocol control to remain central themes in the next phases of IoT adoption.
(Image source: Pixabay)
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