I’ve not seen much in the way of investment in traditional automation products. The larger companies now all call themselves software companies with investments devoted to acquisitions. Many smaller companies and startups either have a software niche or are working on a variety of edge applications.
A long-time contact from the IT world introduced me to ZEDEDA a few years ago and even asked me to appear on a couple of their webcasts. Its niche is called edge orchestration, and it has some significant investors. This new introduction is called Edge Application Services. This platform includes granular edge application controls and configuration services. The initial component of the platform, Edge Access, provides secure access, control and audit tracing for edge deployments.
Edge computing is required to manage and process that data, but the complexity of distributed environments can make it difficult for customers to get started quickly. Enabling access to core services can provide an on-ramp for organizations to benefit from an initial edge use case while also establishing a foundation for future growth, just as was seen previously with cloud adoption.
“Just as we saw occur with the cloud providers in the early days, it is time for the edge market to evolve beyond just infrastructure and begin to offer value-added services in addition,” said Said Ouissal, founder and CEO of ZEDEDA. “Now, with ZEDEDA Edge Application Services, we are able to offer our customers the ability to manage, configure and control their edge applications simply by leveraging the ZEDEDA ecosystem.”
The first service in the suite, ZEDEDA Edge Access, enables IT administrators and platform operations teams to instantly access any remote device from any location at any time. It is a simple solution that provides secure access, control and audit tracing for edge deployments.
ZEDEDA’s open, distributed, cloud-native edge management and orchestration solution has attracted strategic OEM and customer relationships with Global 500 companies, including Emerson, Rockwell Automation, and VMware. The company continues to quadruple the number of edge nodes it has under management annually, scaling toward a hundred thousand edge nodes and has raised more than $55 million in capital from investors, including Coast Range Capital, Lux Capital, Energize Ventures, Porsche Ventures, Chevron Technology Ventures, Emerson Ventures, Juniper Networks, Rockwell Automation, Samsung Next and EDF North America Ventures.
