ZEDEDA — Edge Virtualization Software

Powering the Edge of the Enterprise

Billions of enterprise and industrial IoT devices are getting internet-connected. From manufacturing plants and industrial operations, to trucking and mobility solutions, energy production facilities and retail operations, there are small computers all over the world (called nodes or devices within the industry) that are running various applications, and are fast becoming internet connected in one way or another. These devices location at the outer edge of our networks form what is called the cyber-physical edge.

Unlike the highly streamlined operations inside data centers, there is a wide variety of devices at the edge (ranging from small open source hardware running Raspberry Pi to Dell/HP servers running Linux), and these devices are located far away physically from where IT managers can easily reach on regular basis. In addition, fur to a wide variety of reasons, most of the data generated at the edge will also get processed at the edge, rather than moving everything to the cloud. This makes these these edge hardware/software systems really complicated to deploy, manage, secure, and make available to multiple clouds+on-prem apps. In fact, current systems are insecure (leading to need for industrial cyber security software/services), operating systems are not kept updated, data processing apps running at the cyber-physical edge are hard to maintain and keep updated, and operations to connect and manage these devices with cloud networks are riddled with inefficiencies.

ZEDEDA is a company focused on solving this problem. They are building a software defined, hardware and cloud agnostic solution for processing data at the edge, and connecting edge devices seamlessly to cloud, multi-cloud or hybrid-cloud networks. It makes it possible to securely deploy any application at the edge on any hardware over any network. Its edge virtualization software gives organizations complete and secure control of their data, and avoids vendor lock-in regardless of the apps and clouds they choose to implement. While some of its magic can sometimes fall under the tech jargon associated with infrastructure or platform as a service, the real reason its customers and partners love the solution is because it makes huge common sense for connected edge devices.

Industrial IoT is a massive space, lacks far behind where IT infrastructure stands today for global corpporations. Zededa changes that. Building, deploying, and running apps at the edge (be it hybrid or multi-cloud implementations, cyber security software, or ML/AI based predictive and other analytics, etc) will be just as easy and secure as it is for the cloud today.

I am excited to share that Lux Capital has recently co-led their $16M Series A financing, and I am joining their Board. I was introduced to the Zededa team by Edgard Capdevielle, CEO of one of our other incredible companies (Nozomi Networks) working on industrial cyber security. As we got to know each other’s, and got to understand the opportunity better, we were very impressed by the experience and expertise brought to the table by Zededa cofounders: Said Ouissal, Roman Shaposhnik, Erik Nordmark, and Vijay Tapaskar. Lux invests in deeptech companies that are solving hard problems, and who promise to significantly impact massive industries around the world. Zededa is that. Our partnership with this team, and co-investors like Energize Ventures, Kevin Denuccio, Ed Zander, and others is just beginning, but we are super excited, and looking forward to coming years!