The Australian IOT event calendar will get busier in March, 2019, when Microsoft’s IOT in Action event comes to Australia for the first time.

Sydney will host the free, all-day event (register here) on March 19, following IOT in Action events in Taipei, Shenzhen, New York, Seoul, Tokyo and Nuremberg.

Microsoft is pitching the event as an opportunity for business and technical decision makers to learn how they can take advantage of the US$5 billion the company plans to spend on IOT activities over the next four years. Microsoft will use that money to fund research and development relating to IOT security, creation of IOT development tools and intelligent services, and to grow its partner ecosystem.

Attendees can also opt-in to Microsoft’s matchmaking tool to meet relevant IOT partners at the event.

Microsoft’s IOT partners include cloud solution distributor rhipe, which will use the event to demonstrate an industrial robot arm connected to Azure IOT Hub.

The event will also cover IOT business transformation, IOT security, the intelligent edge, IOT cognitive services, hybrid cloud and leveraging IOT “solution accelerators” to build scalable, repeatable solutions.