IoT Enterprise Startup Axonius Looks To Build Up Sales Efforts With $4 Million In Seed Funding

Israeli startup Axonius, which touts a platform that helps enterprises secure Internet of Things devices, on Wednesday announced it had landed $4 million in seed funding.

CEO Dean Sysman hopes the company will help customers keep up with monitoring and safeguarding their connected devices in the midst of a "Cambrian-like explosion" of the number of IoT devices.

"IoT is the reason why we started our platform – organizations need to manage mobile and IoT devices, and they have so many solutions for different environments that it's hard to see it all with one lens," said Sysman. "With the Axonius Platform, IT and security operations teams gain unprecedented visibility and control of the devices on their networks, allowing them to be innovation partners and enablers for the business.’

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The Axonius platform, which can be deployed on premises or in the cloud, is a single dashboard that integrates information from networked devices and device management solutions.

With the platform, IT and security operations teams – many of whom currently don't know how many devices are on their network or what those devices are – can better monitor and manage connected devices at scale, said Sysman.

The platform can be quickly deployed on a network, but after that end users integrate new device types – from Cisco routers to Windows products – to the platform through an adapter API and plug-in frameworks.

Axonius' platform comes equipped with software-based adapters that help customers bring new types of connected devices onto their networks – such as surveillance cameras or connected printers. Meanwhile, the company also offers plug-ins so that customers can control and manage their devices connected to the network remotely. Both these components help enterprise more quickly and efficiently track all the devices on their network, said Sysman.

"Once the platform is deployed, customers integrate it with their mobile and IoT devices on premise, and all the data from these different solutions build a picture of the devices stored around the organization," said Sysman.

While the platform's biggest customer target is enterprises, Sysman also said the company is focusing on certain vertical markets, like finance, for deployments.

Sysman told CRN he hopes to use the funding to increase the startup's sales efforts in select fields in the U.S., while also growing the company's staff and pushing out research and development efforts.

While the company currently sells direct, Sysman said Axonius is looking to develop a partner strategy in the future and is currently "open to inquiries from the channel" in the U.S. market.

Axonius joins an increasingly competitive startup landscape around the Internet of Things market, as investors like Cisco Systems, Intel Capital and Qualcomm Ventures all aim to cash in on IoT's potential.

YL Ventures was the lead investor in Axonius' seed funding round, with participation from Vertex Ventures and Emerge.