ZEDEDA Announces Integration with Microsoft Azure IoT to Seamlessly and Securely Orchestrate Distributed Edge Computing Workloads at Scale

ZEDEDA announced an integration with Microsoft Azure IoT services that provides customers with full lifecycle management capabilities (edge hardware, OS, Azure IoT Edge Runtime, Azure IoT Edge modules and additional apps), single-click bulk provisioning, risk-free updates and a built-in app marketplace. With Azure Device Provisioning Service (DPS) integration, the solution also enables instant, automated device onboarding and connection to Azure IoT Hub.

The diversity of hardware and software cluttering the distributed edge landscape keeps many edge projects from scaling effectively. ZEDEDA’s open orchestration solution supports any combination of Docker containers, Kubernetes clusters and virtual machines (VMs) deployed on any edge computing node while connecting to any cloud. This solution enables customers to run existing legacy applications in VMs alongside cloud-native containerized applications while harnessing the power of Azure IoT hyperscale cloud to organize, monitor, query and orchestrate changes across massive fleets of edge computing nodes.

“The cloud-based ZEDEDA dashboard provides customers with a bird’s-eye view into their entire distributed edge infrastructure, including the status of all computing nodes and applications,” said Said Ouissal, ZEDEDA’s CEO and founder. “With scale and security, they can instantly deploy all Azure IoT Edge services on large fleets of nodes with a single click and manage the full lifecycle of both the software and hardware.”

ZEDEDA, from this collaboration, also secured co-sell ready status as part of Microsoft’s One Commercial Partner program. ZEDEDA, Microsoft and their partners go to market together to increase IoT and edge technology adoption in industries including oil and gas, manufacturing, energy, retail, healthcare and transportation.

ZEDEDA Edge Orchestration for Azure IoT is now available for purchase through Azure Marketplace. It is eligible for Azure benefits, allowing qualifying customers to apply the marketplace purchase toward their Azure consumption commitment.

Built On a Secure Foundation

ZEDEDA’s Zero Trust security model and optimizations for deployment and management at scale provide the ideal foundation for Azure IoT Edge. Features include support for hardware root of trust (e.g., TPM), measured boot, remote attestation, encryption, I/O port blocking to prevent tampering in the field and distributed firewall to govern data flow from edge to cloud. This policy-based, per-app firewall can segment field assets from upstream networks and data systems to protect critical operations.

Deep Integration Reduces Costs and Provides Flexibility to Adapt

Customers have reduced their management and security costs by more than 50% by using ZEDEDA’s orchestration solution to deploy their existing investments, such as legacy Windows-based apps, alongside new cloud-native, container-based innovations.

“We are shaping the future of the packaging world where every phase in the production process is connected, digitized and automated,” said Serge Morisod, Head of IoT Lab at BOBST. “With ZEDEDA, we sped up our production readiness in the area of device management by six months, and we received a first working proof of concept within a few days, while becoming production-ready in less than two months.”

“Azure IoT Edge offers customers the opportunity to transform their operations by bringing analytics and other workloads from the cloud to the edge, but customers often have complex computing environments that can pose challenges for scaling,” said Tony Shakib, General Manager, Azure IoT at Microsoft Corp. “ZEDEDA enables businesses to easily deploy Azure IoT Edge solutions and manage them in a single pane with their other edge workloads.”

The open-source edge component of ZEDEDA’s solution (EVE-OS from Project EVE within the Linux Foundation’s LF Edge organization) provides customers with long-term flexibility for orchestrating heterogeneous edge hardware and applications in the field. This ensures that they don’t have to worry about vendor lock-in and obsolescence as their needs adapt. EVE-OS can be thought of as “the Android of the Distributed Edge”, serving to unify a diverse hardware and software ecosystem, spanning the broader market and open source community, ZEDEDA’s own Open Edge Ecosystem and long-standing Microsoft partners.

“PTC is proud to count Microsoft and ZEDEDA among the members of our robust customer and partner network,” said Abby Eon, General Manager, Kepware, PTC. “Together, we’re able to deliver a universal remote orchestration foundation that enables customers to quickly scale their projects from pilot to production. We look forward to innovating upon these industry-leading technologies as we remain committed to helping our customers achieve their digital transformation initiatives.”

Additional Partnerships Further Simplify Deployment at Scale

To further help customers accelerate time to value, ZEDEDA is actively working with the majority of leading hardware OEMs to qualify and pre-install EVE-OS on edge hardware in their factories. This enables customers to drop ship hardware to the field, and once power and networking are connected, the technician can leave the site and perform all lifecycle management functions remotely.

ZEDEDA and Microsoft are also working with leading system integrators and distributors to simplify all phases of scaling distributed edge computing projects for customers. This includes integration services, distribution and deployment.

To learn more about ZEDEDA Edge Orchestration for Azure IoT, visit the Azure Marketplace. ZEDEDA’s distributed edge orchestration solution is sold and consumed as a service with a subscription-based enterprise license, including 24/7 support.