Edge computing startup Edgeworx exited stealth mode this week, announcing the launch of its open-source ioFog software that can be used to turn any compute hardware into a secure software platform.

The company timed its launch to coincide with a seed funding round led by Samsung NEXT, with participation from Sequoia Seed and CloudScale Capital Partners.

The ioFog platform is a “fog computing layer,” essentially a kind of computing architecture that uses devices at the edge of networks to carry out a substantial amount of computation, storage and communications locally and routed over the internet backbone. Fog computing is seen as an alternative to cloud computing that shifts some transactions and resources to the edge of a network, rather than establishing channels for cloud storage and utilization.

Benefits of fog computing include less bandwidth requirements, since not every bit of data produced by apps running on the architecture will be sent back to the cloud, instead being aggregated at certain access points such as routers. The net result is lower costs and improved efficiencies, proponents say.

Edge computing platforms such as ioFog are said to be more suitable for hosting “internet of things” devices and sensors deployed in real-world locations such as in a hospital or on a factory floor. This is because the data produced by these devices can then be analyzed on site, instead of in the cloud, ensuring faster access to insights and lower costs.

Edgeworx’s ioFog platform is designed to make it easy to deploy software and devices at the network edge. It’s comprised of four elements, including the main software agent that provides a universal runtime for IoT microservices, which are the components of container-based applications.

It also contains a node controller for managing ioFog instances, software development kits in multiple programming languages for building applications, and developer tools that can be used to simulate a range of deployment scenarios. These elements combine to make it quick and easy to build, deploy and manage applications and containerized microservices at the network edge, Edgeworx said.

Once deployed, the Edgeworx ioFog platform transforms compute hardware such as a remote server into an “intelligent edge device” that can deploy and manage apps and microservices. It also provides connectivity by way of an “edge to edge mesh network.” This creates a private connection between all of the edge devices hosted on the platform, thereby eliminating the need for traditional connectivity.

The Edgeworx ioFog additionally provides strong security that incorporates hardware root of trust and microservice verification. The net result is that Edgeworx’s platform provides complete independence from the cloud, if customers choose.

“Edgeworx is solving the most critical challenges faced when attempting to deploy secure applications at the edge without re-inventing existing cloud apps,” Hossein Eslambolshi, technical adviser to Facebook Inc. and an Edgeworx investor with CloudScale, said in a statement. “Edgeworx is doing for the edge what Android did for mobile phones.”

SiliconANGLE’s video studio theCUBE had an exclusive conversation recently with founders Farah Papaioannou and Kilton Hopkins:

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