The 25 Hottest Edge Software Companies: 2020 Edge Computing 100
Here are the 25 software companies that are playing a critical role in executing real-time data analytics and machine learning for organizations of all sizes.
With businesses expecting to increase investments in edge capacity in the coming years, the software inside these edge environments will play a critical role in executing real-time data analytics and machine learning for organizations of all sizes.
The global edge computing market is expected to reach approximately $250 billion in 2024, with a compound annual growth rate of 12.5 percent over the next four years, according to a forecast from IDC. The research firm says edge-related software will make up approximately 22 percent of all spending at the edge.
Software is the key ingredient to enabling edge use cases around complex edge applications, the Internet of Things, and data and resource management. From large software stars such as VMware, Red Hat and Citrix to startups like Edgeworx and Ananda Networks, dozens of vendors across the globe are investing heavily in edge innovation.
CRN breaks down the 25 companies providing the best edge software technology in the industry today.
Adaptiv Networks
Gatineau, Quebec
Top Executive: Bernard Breton, CEO
Formerly known as TELoIP, channel-friendly Adaptiv Networks comes to market with its cloud-managed SD-WAN offering in a simple, Network-as-a-Service license. The company‘s product licenses include everything an enterprise needs to target new applications and users at the edge, including a cloud-based gateway and edge network device.
Ananda Networks
Los Altos, Calif.
Top Executive: Adi Ruppin, Co-Founder, CEO
Ananda Networks burst onto the edge networking scene this year with a focus on distributed computing and helping businesses create private networks to connect all users, regardless of location. The startup was founded by networking and cybersecurity entrepreneurs and announced $6 million in seed funding in August.
BMC
Houston
Top Executive: Ayman Sayed CEO
BMC is taking its “automation everywhere” mantra to the edge with a slew of software tools that leverage AI and machine learning to empower indviduals in every part of the organization. One sign of BMC’s expanding reach: a deal with Hermes Germany GmbH, a German logistics service provider, which is using BMC Helix solutions hosted on AWS to power their services and operations management transformation. The BMC solution powered “significant cost savings” and a 75 percent improvement in service and operation management efficiencies, BMC said. Also notable a recent blockbuster expanded partnership between BMC and India outsourcing behemoth Tech Mahindra which is leveraging BMC AIOps and analytics.
Cato Networks
Tel Aviv, Israel
Top Executive: Shlomo Kramer, Co-Founder, CEO
Cato Networks, a unique networking player now valued at $1 billion, is bringing integrated SD-WAN and security to the edge. The startup has been heads-down-focused on connecting remote offices, mobile users, data centers and cloud resources into a secure and optimized globally managed SD-WAN.
Citrix
Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Top Executive: David Henshall, President, CEO
Citrix’s Secure Internet Access and Citrix SD-WAN provide the key components in a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) offering to support employees everywhere. The virtualization giant enables customers to securely connect to a virtual desktop, server or application at the edge.
ClearBlade
Austin, Texas
Top Executive: Eric Simone, Co-Founder, CEO
ClearBlade wants to make it easy to scale IoT deployments and run AI models with an edge computing platform that automatically syncs data across multiple systems, regardless of where they’re located. The company has developed several purpose-built IoT offerings that run on its edge platform, including automated rail, smart monitoring and asset tracking.
Edge Intelligence
Boston
Top Executive: Kate Mitchell, CEO
Edge Intelligence provides a software platform that processes data in real time to give customers insight into distributed data at the edge from servers, routers and threat intelligence platforms. The company’s analytics architecture provides centralized management and access to geographically distributed data.
Edgeworx
San Jose, Calif.
Top Executive: Kilton Hopkins, Co-Founder, CEO
The edge startup is focused on bringing Kubernetes to the IoT edge with its ioFOG Engine that enables businesses to run any software on any endpoint using open-source technology. Edgeworx recently launched Darcy, an AI-powered camera that helps customers track COVID-19-related requirements.
Gigamon
Santa Clara, Calif.
Top Executive: Paul Hooper, CEO
Privately held network visibility and traffic monitoring technology player Gigamon is aggregating, transforming and analyzing networking data at the edge to solve businesses‘ critical performance and security needs. The company kicked off a fast-growing partner program filled with network and cloud-minded partners in 2019.
IGEL
Bremen, Germany
Top Executive: Jed Ayres, Global CEO
Ayres has transformed IGEL into a secure edge software powerhouse. In the process, IGEL has carved out the leading position in the edge operating system market with its multi-cloud, multidevice Linux OS. The razor-sharp focus on software has put partners at the center of the cloud workspaces recurring revenue software revolution.
Kloudspot
Sunnyvale, Calif.
Top Executive: Guillermo Diaz, CEO
Startup Kloudspot has been offering a situational awareness and intelligence platform that provides monitoring and analytics for physical spaces since it got its start in 2016. The company is using its cloud and AI-powered platform to help businesses use IoT and connect devices, no matter where they are located on the network.
Liqid
Broomfield, Colo.
Top Executive: Sumit Puri, Co-Founder, CEO
Liqid provides a software-defined composable infrastructure platform that lets customers manage, scale and configure servers in seconds and then reallocate core data center devices on demand as workflows evolve. Processes can be automated to better address the high data demands involved with edge computing.
LogicMonitor
Santa Barbara, Calif.
Top Executive: Kevin McGibben, President, CEO
IT infrastructure monitoring giant LogicMonitor boosted its AIOps chops when it scooped up Swedish tech firm Unomaly in January. Since then, the company is helping businesses future-proof their environments by monitoring everything from the edge to the cloud, to the core, from anywhere, from one platform.
Nutanix
San Jose, Calif.
Top Executive: Rajiv Ramaswami, President, CEO
The hyperconverged and hybrid cloud software standout has created a number of new edge products in recent years, including Nutanix Karbon Platform Service for IoT, which delivers local compute and AI-driven processing to edge devices. The company’s Xi IoT offering helps customers analyze new and existing data streams at the edge.
PTC
Boston
Top Executive: James Heppelmann, President, CEO
PTC provides industrial IoT platforms and offerings that can run anywhere from the cloud to the edge. The company’s ThingWorx platform enables applications such as predictive maintenance and optimized equipment effectiveness while making it easier to collect and manage data streams at the edge with offerings like the Edge MicroServer.
Red Hat
Raleigh, N.C.
Top Executive: Paul Cormier, President, CEO
Edge computing is an integral part of Red Hat’s open hybrid cloud strategy with its edge offerings focused on making operations simpler through automated provisioning, management and orchestration. Red Hat OpenStack with distributed compute nodes supports edge workloads like network functions virtualization along with centralized management for edge environments.
Scale Computing
Indianapolis
Top Executive: Jeff Ready, Co-Founder, CEO
Scale Computing has driven HCI innovation at the edge for years. In November, it launched a line of HCI appliances to provide high- performance applications at edge locations. The company has also put its full HC3 HCI platform into a small-device RAM footprint that allows ultrasmall products to run mission-critical apps at the edge.
Silver Peak
Santa Clara, Calif.
Top Executive: David Hughes, Founder, SVP, WAN Business, Aruba
The edge computing superstar – which was acquired nearly three months ago by Hewlett Packard Enterprise for $925 million -is ready to play an even bigger role in the edge landscape with the backing of its $27 billion edge to cloud platform as a service parent. Aruba – HPE’s intelligent edge subsidiary- has already started integrating the Silver Peak SD-WAN offering tightly with its AI based ClearPass security platform. The second priority integration point with Silver Peak will be with Aruba Central-the Aruba network management platform -with a delivery timetable of one year, said Melkote.
“We are going to get what I call a ‘turbo acceleration’ from the Silver Peak acquisition,” predicted HPE CEO Antonio Neri in an interview with CRN.
Splunk
San Francisco
Top Executive: Doug Merritt, President, CEO
To see just how fast the edge computing phenomenon is taking hold, look no further than the speed at which Splunk is helping customers make sense of data at the edge. “2020, for an unexpected set of reasons, [due to] the pandemic, has cemented firmly that the data age has arrived,” said Merritt.
StorMagic
Bristol, U.K.
Top Executive: Brian Grainger, CRO
StorMagic designed its storage software specifically for edge applications across thousands of sites. Its SvSAN virtual SAN is targeted at edge computing environments where it can work with hyper-converged infrastructure systems or as a storage-only target for any server, with a single interface for adding resilience for up to 1,000 two-server clusters.
Uplevel Systems
Tigard, Ore.
Top Executive: Tom Alexander, Co-Founder, CEO
Networking newcomer Uplevel Systems offers a simplified approach to managed IT services for small businesses. The five-year-old startup’s system includes security, SD-WAN and remote management capabilities so businesses and MSPs can address the needs of far-reaching networks, including distributed locations and employees working from home.
Veeam Software
Baar, Switzerland
Top Executive: William Largent, Chairman, CEO
With data analysis being a key use case for edge computing, the backup and recovery software star provides data security and protection to edge environments. Veeam’s Availability Suite makes data management simple, flexible and reliable at the edge. Veeam also supports Microsoft’s Azure Edge Compute Stack.
Versa Networks
San Jose, Calif.
Top Executive: Kelly Ahuja, CEO
Security-focused SD-WAN player Versa Networks this year introduced its cloud-based secure access offering that gives businesses a scalable, remote access service for securely connecting to applications in private and public clouds, or anywhere on the network. The offering is a part of Versa‘s growing portfolio of offerings aimed at digital transformation.
VMware
Palo Alto, Calif.
Top Executive: Pat Gelsinger, CEO
The virtualization powerhouse plans to help construct the next-generation telco edge infrastructure needed to support 5G with its Telco Cloud platform, which includes NSX, automation and Kubernetes. VMware’s vast software portfolio for the edge includes VMware’s SD-WAN by VeloCloud, NSX Data Center and vSphere Bitfusion for elastic AI edge computing.
Zededa
San Jose, Calif.
Top Executive: Said Ouissal, Founder, CEO
Zededa wants to make IoT more open and interoperable with its IoT edge orchestration offering, which enables organizations to deploy and manage applications on any hardware at the distributed edge while supporting connectivity to any cloud or on-premises system. The company’s offering includes an app marketplace for single-click deployment and a distributed firewall.