Why I Joined ZEDEDA

I’m pleased to announce that I recently joined ZEDEDA as VP of Ecosystem. In my role, I will be shaping our ecosystem strategy—from hardware to cloud—in collaboration with customers, partners, and the open source community. 

Technology trends such as IoT, AI, AR/VR, and autonomous vehicles are creating an exponential growth in data, making edge computing a necessity for reasons including latency, bandwidth, security, and uptime. As a result, we’re seeing a massive uptick in interest from companies of all sizes in adopting and deploying edge computing solutions to complement their investments in the cloud.  

Scaling solution deployments in centralized cloud environments is well understood, but the edge presents a unique challenge because of its highly distributed and heterogeneous nature. There is no single edge; rather, there is a continuum of edges characterized by technology choices, domain expertise, and stakeholder needs that get increasingly specialized the closer you get to the physical world. Orchestrating edge solution deployments requires accommodating legacy systems, widely distributed locations, and highly constrained devices, as well as maintaining uptime and security for mission-critical processes. 

I’ve been promoting the need to leverage cloud-native principles to address the heterogeneous nature of the edge for several years. When I recently decided it was time for a career change, it was clear to me that ZEDEDA was the right choice because of our shared vision and the strength and expertise of their team, spanning solution development, management, security, networking, embedded systems, and open source. 

While many edge solutions today are leveraging containers for deployment, ZEDEDA’s edge orchestration solution is differentiated because it is based on a Type 1 hypervisor that can support both virtual machines and containers on distributed computing nodes. In addition to providing an extra layer of security, a hypervisor-based approach enables users to more effectively manage and secure their existing edge applications while building out new, cloud-native, containerized applications in parallel. 

Further, by evolving their hypervisor as Project EVE (Edge Virtualization Engine) within the open source community in LF Edge, ZEDEDA is transparently creating APIs that mitigate vendor lock-in and promote interoperability and flexibility with this foundational layer, which can in turn be orchestrated by their cloud-based console. The network effect created by open source collaboration will also facilitate support for the large variety of hardware and software applications that will make up the edge. 

In the current IT environment, the need for simple and secure edge management solutions will only grow, which is why this is an important area to invest in. I believe ZEDEDA is well-positioned to be the leader in edge orchestration based on a strong team and a differentiated approach that is rooted in open source. 

I look forward to collaborating with our partners and the open source community to build scalable edge solutions that deliver valued outcomes to our customers, in addition to helping them innovate faster with support from an open ecosystem. As the old saying goes: if you want to go fast, you go alone, but if you want to go far, you go with others. Reach out if you’re interested in learning more!

-Jason Shepherd