ZEDEDA Accelerates Growth with New Executive Hires, Opening of European Headquarters in Berlin

• Darren Kimura joins as COO, Padraig Stapleton as VP Global Engineering, Michael Pearl as VP Global Sales

• Veteran open-source developer Dr. Dmitri Chiriaev to lead the European office

• Momentum driven by growing European customer base and validates ZEDEDA’s position as the disruptive orchestration solution for the distributed edge

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ZEDEDA, the leader in orchestration for the distributed edge, today announced the hiring of three industry veterans to executive roles, along with the opening of its European headquarters in Berlin, Germany.

The moves come weeks after ZEDEDA closed a $12.5 million strategic investment round with an eye on expanding its global leadership in secure distributed edge computing. The company was recently named IoT Security Platform of the Year as part of the 9th Annual Compass Intelligence Awards, while CRN included ZEDEDA in its list of the 10 Coolest IoT Software Companies of 2021.

“Since the launch of ZEDEDA’s distributed edge orchestration solution in January, demand has far surpassed our expectations,” said ZEDEDA founder and CEO Said Ouissal. “The executives joining our team bring deep expertise in operating world-class organizations and will help ZEDEDA grow and scale. And, our new Berlin office opens access to top developer talent in Europe and a new support hub for our international customers.”

Executive Team Adds Industry Veterans Darren Kimura, Padraig Stapleton, Michael Pearl

Darren Kimura, who previously served as President and CEO at LiveAction (a Network Performance Management software company) and pioneered MicroCSP (Micro-scaled Concentrating Solar Power technologies) as CEO of Sopogy, joins the company as Chief Operating Officer. With experience taking three previous companies from seed stage to exit, and as a venture capitalist, Kimura will drive ZEDEDA’s go-to-market growth and strategy.

“The growth that ZEDEDA has achieved is a testament to its vision, product excellence and execution,” Kimura said. “I’m excited to join this amazing team, driving strategy and execution, with the goal to extend our leadership in the edge computing industry as we expand operations globally.”

Padraig Stapleton brings senior management experience in both public and pre-IPO companies to his new role as ZEDEDA’s VP of Engineering. Stapleton spent two years growing AT&T’s Big Data Development group and most recently served as chief of engineering at Mobileum. At ZEDEDA, Stapleton will coordinate the work of engineers worldwide, focusing on driving innovation and improving product quality.

“Edge computing creates a complexity within organizations, from new challenges around security, availability, networking, and more, to an immense diversity of hardware, applications, data sources and destinations, and more. ” Stapleton said. “ZEDEDA’s vision of an open framework that enables organizations to easily scale their edge deployments is industry-defining, and I’m excited to join ZEDEDA to build and scale its worldwide engineering operations.”

Veteran sales executive Michael Pearl joins ZEDEDA to grow sales and drive customer engagements. Prior to ZEDEDA, Pearl spent two years leading Cisco’s Industrial IoT Americas sales team after previously serving in various IoT and networking sales and business development leadership roles at Cisco, Jasper and Axeda. Pearl brings extensive startup experience, with expertise leading OEM sales engagements and scaling sales organizations to drive rapid revenue growth.

“As more organizations focus on automation, analytics and AI while utilizing multi-cloud capabilities, ZEDEDA is in a unique position to help companies secure and scale the distributed computing edge while providing future proof, long-term orchestration options to our customers,” Pearl said. “I’m excited to join ZEDEDA at this pivotal stage and help define and execute on the company’s vision for expanding its sales operations.”

Berlin Office Actively Recruiting Open-Source Developers

ZEDEDA’s European headquarters in Berlin, Germany, will serve as an R&D hub and support European-based customers and will be under the leadership of veteran open-source developer Dr. Dmitri Chiriaev. Initial efforts will build an extension of ZEDEDA’s engineering team, focused primarily on the open-source development of EVE-OS within Project EVE in the Linux Foundation’s LF Edge organization. ZEDEDA contributed the initial code for Project EVE in 2019, with the goal of establishing an open, vendor-agnostic and standardized architecture and operating system that streamlines orchestration of cloud-native and legacy apps for distributed compute nodes. In this regard, EVE-OS can be thought of as “the Android of distributed edge computing.” ZEDEDA leverages EVE-OS as the edge foundation for its cloud-based orchestration solution to deliver visibility, control, and security to the distributed edge at scale.

Interested applicants should visit the ZEDEDA career page.

About ZEDEDA
ZEDEDA, the leader in orchestration for the distributed edge, delivers visibility, control and security for edge computing deployments. ZEDEDA enables customers the freedom of deploying and managing any app on any hardware​ ​at scale​ ​and connecting to any cloud or on-premises systems. Distributed edge solutions require a diverse mix of technologies and domain expertise, and ZEDEDA provides customers with an open, vendor-agnostic orchestration framework that breaks down silos and provides the needed agility and futureproofing as they evolve their connected operations. Customers can now seamlessly orchestrate intelligent applications at the distributed edge to gain access to critical insights, make real-time decisions and maximize operational efficiency. ZEDEDA is a venture-backed Silicon Valley company headquartered in San Jose, California, with offices in Bangalore and Pune, India and Berlin, Germany. For more information, contact [e-mail].