Foghorn Systems Snags $30 Million In Funding Round As Company Continues To Build Out Partner Ecosystem
Foghorn Systems is continuing its trek to success in the IoT market, on Tuesday announcing that it has raised a $30 million Series B funding round.
The company will use the funding to help customers in the industrial market get from the "early mover phase to full-scale deployments" – and partners will play an important role in that, CEO David King told CRN.
"Our technology is core to us, and we're excited about the progress we've made at the user level," he said. "We're working with different partners, and we have a lot of systems integrators and resellers who are getting up to speed."
Intel Capital and Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures led Foghorn Systems' new funding round, along with new investor Honeywell Ventures. Other existing investors include March Capital, GE, Dell, Bosch, Yokogawa, Darling Ventures and The Hive.
Mountain View, Calif.-based Foghorn Systems, which was founded in 2014, offers an industrial Internet of Things software stack that combines technologies to blend sensor data from industrial machines with cloud-based management, analysis and machine learning capabilities.
The IoT company, which targets vertical markets like manufacturing, oil and gas, power and water, as well as smart building applications, landed $12 million in Series A funding in 2016.
Most recently Foghorn Systems launched its next-generation industrial IoT software platform, Lightning ML, which touts integrated machine learning capabilities and is universally compatible across all major industrial IoT systems.
"When we announced our platform last September it was viewed as a new technology that customers were starting to consider – but now it's on everyone's radar screen and agenda, and customers are looking to go beyond proof of concept. It's starting to take hold," said King.
The company recently expanded its partner strategy to keep up with "strong demand in every major industrial sector."
As part of its partner ecosystem, Foghorn Systems is working with an array of partners, including industrial IoT consultants and systems integrators who provide the domain-specific data science, application software development and on-site implementation services for the Foghorn Lightning edge analytics and software platform, said King.
These include partners like PWC, Tech Mahindra, UNIADEX, and NEC.
Meanwhile, the company is also working with partners like GE Predix, Bosch and Yokogawa to integrate its platform into their industrial equipment, automation and industrial IoT software platforms. Foghorn is also working with gateway suppliers built on Intel and ARM processors – including Dell, Cisco and HPE.
Its cloud platform partners include GE Predix, Microsoft, AWS and SAP HANA.
"I think we're just getting to the exciting part … This partner ecosystem is already delivering high value customer-validated IIoT product and services that tap into the tribal knowledge of industrial operators while bringing the power of big data analytics and machine learning technology to address the core operational and digital transformation challenges that all industrial organizations are facing today," he said.