balenaCloud

balenaCloud is a hosted platform for developing, deploying, managing and scaling fleets of IoT Linux devices, built on a container-based technology stack. Using containers for embedded devices is the defining decision: it means the deployment model developers already know from server work applies to hardware in the field, and an update is a new container image rather than a bespoke firmware process.

The supporting products are genuinely useful in their own right and several are free. balenaOS is the operating system, built specifically to run Docker containers on embedded devices. balenaEngine is a container engine for IoT based on Moby technology from Docker, tuned for constrained hardware where a standard engine is too heavy. balenaEtcher is the widely used tool for flashing SD cards and USB drives, familiar to many people who have never used the commercial platform. openBalena is free and open source software for managing IoT devices, which provides a self-hosted route.

Operationally the platform covers over-the-air updates, a full API and SDK, and Linux OS updates, the last being the part most often neglected in IoT deployments. Devices in the field running an unpatched OS are a security liability, and a platform that updates the operating system as well as the application closes that gap. balenaHub, documentation, masterclasses, forums and compatible hardware listings support adoption. Industries addressed are industrial IoT, energy, robotics and drones.

Pricing is published and device-based, and the first ten devices are always free, which is enough for a genuine prototype rather than a demonstration. Paid tiers include a device allowance with a per-additional-device rate that falls as the tier rises.