The fully managed SaaS offering is built on Azure and caters to both partners and customers, simplifying the development process and making it easier for customers to get started in IoT, according to Microsoft.

 "This new IoT SaaS offering has the potential to dramatically increase the speed at which manufacturers can innovate and bring new products to market, as well as lower the barriers to creating IoT solutions that generate new revenue opportunities and better experiences for customers," Microsoft wrote in a blog post.

IoT Central will be offered alongside Microsoft's existing platform-as-a-service solution for partners, Azure IoT suite, which was introduced in 2015. Azure IoT suite offers more customisation options with customer data collection, reporting, monitoring and analysis.

Microsoft said IoT Central would begin rolling out to customers over the coming months.

On the local front, Microsoft Australia also put its weight behind IoT in the channel in 2015 by forming an "Internet of Things partner group" with nine well-known Australian partners. The group consists of BizData, CDM, Empired, Ignia, Mexia, Oakton, MOQDigital, RAMP and Readify, which were chosen for understanding the “depth of the transformation” of IoT and their solutions that were already developed for customers.