Insight Partners Leads $60m Funding for Edge Deployment Platform

Venture capital firm Insight Partners led a $60 million series C round to fuel market growth of a software product for managing, scaling and updating edge devices.

The new funding is expected to build out the infrastructure for Seattle-based Esper’s edge deployment technology, primarily by expanding its visibility to more enterprises.

Proceeds are also allocated for striking new partnerships, following an existing collaboration to manage first responder device networks with enterprise mobile network provider Siyata Mobile.

The product is part of a movement known as DevOps that brings IT operations management closer to the delivery of new software features.

Enterprises in verticals such as fast food, healthcare, connected fitness, retail and digital signage are among those to have adopted the technology.

“For years now, we’ve seen these massive projections about IoT devices of all kinds,” said Philine Huizing, vice president at Insight Partners. “But on the ground, enterprises and small and medium-sized businesses are struggling with the reality that large-scale deployments of devices are hard and expensive when you go it alone.”

Insight Partners’ involvement comes after Esper raised $30 million in a series B financing round led by Scale Venture Partners in May 2021. The other series C investors included Scale as well as Madrona Ventures, Root Ventures and Ubiquity Ventures.

Agile Device Management

Operators of networks containing fleets of enterprise mobile devices, tablets and IoT sensors could benefit from platforms that enable agile edge deployment of product fixes and features.

The number of devices on the enterprise edge is expanding to include everything from connected medical devices and fitness equipment to in-store kiosk interfaces.

More than 200 enterprises and 2,000 developers currently use Esper’s cloud technology for deployment and application management on devices running Android operating systems, according to the company.

The software deployment tools are used by Ordermark, a unified ordering system back-end for restaurants and food delivery outlets, and Spire Health’s remote patient monitoring service.

Build, Develop, Test, Integrate

Application programming interfaces, software development kits and plugin tools are available to broaden the scope for customized development and integrations with cloud services.

The idea is to allow software engineers to build, develop and test new features but empower automated systems to handle integration and deployment across edge devices.

Telemetry data can then be accessed to understand how the new builds are performing on each edge device.