Summary
Consider the scenario of deploying digital signage equipment at the bus stops. Your objective is to translate and display the text in English, when the tourist speaks at the sign in specified language. Hence, the tourist will be informed about the health and safety services in real-time.
In this scenario, Azure Functions can help you to deploy code that implements the solution with the IoT device(digital signage equipment). The Azure function app that you create and deploy in the cloud is uses Cognitive Service. To connect and configure the Cognitive Service to the function, you create a Cognitive service account in the cloud that will generate an API key. Hence, you can use it to access the Cognitive Service in the function. When you speak to the IoT device, the function initiates the code execution in a serverless environment. The function code recognizes the speech from the microphone of the IoT device and translates from source language to target language with the help of Cognitive service API.
Without the Azure Function, you would need to build this app from scratch. You would need to hardcode to access other services. Azure Functions is easy to configure and set up within minutes. The cloud infrastructure provides all the up-to-date servers. Once the function code is ready, cloud servers host the function app. The cloud service provider automatically provisions, scales, and manages the infrastructure required to run the code. Hence, you don’t need to set up any application infrastructure or allocate resources in advance. You can scale your application rapidly. Also, the functions are stateless and short-lived. They are triggered by events. You run the function only as needed.
Clean up
When you're working in your own subscription, it's a good idea at the end of a project to identify whether you still need the resources you created. Resources left running can cost you money. You can delete resources individually or delete the resource group to delete the entire set of resources.