Let's assume that after hours of discussions and a range of factors (geologically disperse, high number of devices hitting with light-weight data quite frequently, and more) we have decided to go with a cloud-based solution, and selected Azure cloud services as our provider.

Based on our requirements, the high-level design we come up with is as shown in the following diagram:

The preceding diagram clarifies our understanding of how the home hub gets inputs from the devices, and transfers them over to the event processor in the cloud. The consumer's smartphone running our app can receive the status remotely about his electrical appliances at home; he will also be able to control them to a certain extent, for example, for switching them on or off.