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Factors such as latency, bandwidth, security and privacy are driving the adoption of edge computing, which aims to move data to the point where it is generated. Consider a temperature sensor in a shipyard or a fleet of cameras in a fulfillment center. Typically, data from them may need to be transferred to a server for analysis. But with an edge computing setup, the data can be processed on-site, eliminating the costs of cloud computing and enabling processing at greater speed and scale (in theory).
However, technical challenges can stand in the way of successful edge computing deployment. That’s according to Said Uysal, CEO of Zedda, a provider of distributed edge orchestration and virtualization software. Ouissal has a product to sell — Zedda works with customers to manage edge devices — but it points to Zedda’s growth to back up its claims. The number of edge devices under the company’s management grew 4x last year, while Zedda’s revenue grew 7x, says Usal.
Zedda’s success in saving money during the downturn also suggests that the edge computing market is strong. The company announced today that it has raised $26 million in Series B funding. EDF North America Venture.
“There were two main trends that led to the founding of Zedda,” Uyssal told TechCrunch in an email interview. “First, as more devices, people, and environments become connected, unprecedented amounts of data are being generated… Second, the sheer volume and diversity happening at the edge is unmanageable for organizations in use cases. Fashion. The only successful way to manage this type of environment was for organizations to have distributed visibility across all hardware, applications, clouds, and networks across their edge environments, just like in the data center or cloud.
Wuysal co-founded Jeddan in 2016 with Eric Nordmark, Roman Shaposchnik and Vijay Thapaskar. Previously, Ousal was VP of Strategy and Customer Management at Ericsson and Product Manager at Juniper Networks. Nordmark was a distinguished engineer at Cisco, while Shaposchnik – also an engineer by training – spent years developing cloud architectures at Sun Microsystems, Huawei, Yahoo and Cloudera.
Zedda’s software-as-a-service product, which works with devices from brands like Super Micro, monitors edge installations to ensure they’re working as intended. It also guides users through deployment steps using open source projects designed for Internet of Things Orchestration and Cyber Defense. Zedda’s technology stack, for example, builds on the Linux Foundation’s EVE-OS, an open Linux-based operating system for distributed edge computing.
Zedda aims to support most white-labeled devices offered by major OEMs. The vendor-agnostic software can be deployed on any bare-metal hardware or virtual machine to deliver orchestration services and run applications. According to Uyssal, use cases range from surveillance sensors and security cameras to regularly updating the software in cell towers.
“The C-suite recognizes that digital transformation is critical to their organization’s success, especially for organizations with distributed operations, and that digital transformation cannot happen without edge computing. The ability to collect, analyze and act on data at the distributed edge enables businesses to increase their competitive advantage, reduce costs, improve operational efficiency, unlock new revenue streams and operate in a safe and secure environment, he said. “As a result, edge computing projects are accelerating across enterprises.”
Some studies show this. In a June 2021 Eclipse Foundation poll, 54% of organizations surveyed were using or planning to use edge computing technologies in the next 12 months. A recent IDC report, meanwhile, predicts double-digit growth in edge computing investments over the next few years.
Zedda’s customers are mainly in the IT infrastructure, industrial automation and oil and gas industries. Uyssal won’t say how much the company currently has, but insists that Zedda is sufficiently differentiated from rivals in the edge device orchestration space.
From an ‘IT down’ perspective, we are committed to data solutions such as VMware, SUSE, Nutanix, Red Hat and Sunlight, but these solutions are not suitable for deployment outside of secure data centers. In terms of ‘OT up’, its competitors include the likes of Balena, Portainer and Canonical Ubuntu Core. However, these solutions are better suited for ‘greenfield’ use cases that require only containers and lack the security required for true enterprise and industrial deployments,” Ausel argued. “Despite the economic downturn, edge computing is leading strategic and transformative investors to increase their commitment to creating new business opportunities, at a time when they may be reluctant to invest in other avenues.”
Either way, Zedda, which has a team of about 100 spread across the U.S., Germany and India, is actively hiring and plans to expand its R&D, sales and marketing teams later this year, Ousal said. To date, the eight-year-old startup has raised a total of $55.4 million in venture capital.
“[We aim to increase] Use cases and integrations we support. In our products, we continue to focus on innovation to improve ease of use and security. As the edge computing market continues to evolve and develop,” Ousal said. “We’re also focused on enabling apps, including updating legacy apps and bringing new solutions to market that leverage technologies like AI and machine learning.”
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