Texas-based edge computing services provider Izuma Networks has acquired Pelion’s device management business.

Izuma Networks was founded earlier this year by Travis McCollum and Ed Hemphill, veterans of the IoT industry. They previously founded WigWag, an Austin-based start-up acquired by Arm in 2019.

Izuma Networks closed an investment by SoftBank Group, which will be used to hire talent and improve IoT services previously under Pelion Device Management, with a focus on development and dev-ops. The funding will also go towards streamlining and integrating edge and IoT services under one umbrella.

“The acquisition of Pelion Device Management will allow us to provide long-term, reliable technology to our customers through changes to our cloud and licensing offerings,” said Hemphill. “With the advent of more complex applications such as AI models running on richer edge compute and microcontroller platforms and the amount of data that 5G can transmit with more data hungry sensor and imagery components, moving IoT applications towards the edge is fundamental. The funding from Softbank will allow the company to focus on streamlining and integrating our edge and IoT offerings, as well as providing new offerings to help our customers meet the rapidly changing regulatory and security requirements around the world.”

With changes in major providers offerings, such as the recently announced shutdown of Google’s IoT core services, the team at Izuma Networks is focused on providing a pure play IoT and edge service with long-term support that is cloud provider independent. The team is focused on making changes to its cloud and licence offerings that will provide assurances to major enterprise customers building products with decade and longer product life cycles.

“We are excited to partner with two proven entrepreneurs in building out the Izuma Networks multi-cloud, edge compute offering for IoT services,” said Alexander Fortmuller, director of investing for SoftBank. “Our investment in Izuma marks a further acceleration in the journey towards the proliferation of IoT services and edge compute begun under Pelion Device Management.”

Izuma Networks’ edge computing offering includes Izuma Edge, an Apache 2.0 licensed software stack that can live on any x86 or Arm 64bit class product. This stack lets users deploy applications using Kubernetes APIs and provides critical remote management services for operators deploying dozens to thousands of remote gateways or edge servers. Izuma Client, formerly Pelion Device Management Client, is a lightweight portable stack for connecting IoT devices to the Izuma cloud. Izuma Client has firmware updates and lightweight M2M data services. Both the edge and client stacks provide security through secure boot support and root-of -trust management.