How does a startup grow during a global pandemic? Tapping into some of tech’s most innovative minds is quite helpful.

Take Pensando Systems Inc. for example. The company was originally founded in 2017 by four engineers who led several technological innovations at Cisco Systems Inc.: Mario Mazzola, Prem Jain, Luca Cafiero and Soni Jiandani.

After three years in stealth mode, Pensando burst onto the enterprise computing scene with a flurry in October 2019 and announced its intention to “democratize cloud architectures for any enterprise, public cloud, or service provider.” The company’s funding rounds were big and included a founder-led Series A round of $71 million, a customer-led Series B round of $62 million, and a Series C round of $145 million from Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Since its launch last fall, Pensando has grown to a team of 250 and collaborated with other service provider customers. It has also had multiple product releases to enterprise and cloud customers — all amid a global pandemic. “The product is doing very well in these environments,” said Pensando Chief Executive Officer Prem Jain during a recent interview with theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming video studio.

The need for edge computing was already pressing prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, it’s more important than ever, and Pensando is providing solutions, including its Distributed Services Platform, which provides software-defined services at the server edge.

During a special virtual event on June 17, theCUBE will be conducting interviews with key Pensando executives and technologists, discussing how Pensando is helping to future-proof the enterprise, its expanding ecosystem of partners, and how its Distributed Services Platform is transforming the way organizations build their infrastructure. (* Disclosure below.)

“The opportunity for Pensando is to enable enterprise companies and cloud providers with security, telemetry, and flexibility for new services in every server,” said Stu Miniman, senior analyst at Wikibon. “Pensando’s Future Proof the Enterprise event will examine the technical underpinnings of the technology and provide company and partnership updates.”

Future-proofing the enterprise for intelligent edge computing

Pensando’s plan to future-proof the enterprise rests on the programmability of its data center chip. Specifically designed to handle computing tasks related to network management, storage and security, the chip is part of an accelerator card plugged into a server to offload these crucial tasks. The idea is to unburden the machine’s main processor and free up compute power that can be better allocated for bigger workloads. 

“Pensando’s combination of hardware and software is very programmable, making it future-proof for enterprise. What that means is, if things change over time, they can update their card through programming,” Miniman explained.

In consolidating a solution for networking, storage and security, Pensando hopes its chip can replace the need for pricey, standalone appliances tacked onto servers for managing such tasks. By making it programmable, the chip is designed to weather the waves of next-generation cloud computing across ever-evolving infrastructures as software applications are being increasingly processed at the edge of the network. 

A recent study by Gartner Inc. projects 70% of all enterprise applications will need processing at the edge, demonstrating a promising market opportunity for Pensando. Yet it’s the intelligence and visibility behind these data transactions that bring true value. This is where Pensando hopes to compete with Amazon Web Services Inc., which has its own version of a high-speed, scalable chip for processing data at the edge. Dubbed Project Nitro, the chip technology emerged from AWS’ acquisition of Annapurna Labs and has become an important differentiator amongst Amazon’s public cloud rivals.

Herein lies the partnership opportunities for Pensando as it grows its startup stature. Having landed some high-profile customers, including The Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Oracle Corp. and HPE, Pensando hopes its chip proves a worthy alternative to Project Nitro. 

“Pensando said, ‘Annapurna did this — we’re going to enable others to do the same.’ If they can deliver, it would be very powerful,” Miniman said.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

We offer you various ways to watch the live coverage of the Pensando Future Proof Your Enterprise event, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube channel. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s events on SiliconANGLE.

TheCUBE Insights podcast

SiliconANGLE also has podcasts available of archived interview sessions, available on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify, which you can enjoy while on the go.

Guests who will be interviewed on theCUBE during Pensando’s Future Proof Your Enterprise event

Guests who will be interviewed on theCUBE during the Pensando Future Proof Your Enterprise event include Pensando executives Prem Jain, chief executive officer; Randy Pond, chief financial officer;  Soni Jiandani, co-founder and chief business officer; and Vipin Jain, co-founder and chief technology officer.

We’ll also be talking with Steve Hershkowitz, vice president and general manager, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.; Francis Matus, vice president of engineering, Pensando; Silvano Gai, fellow, Pensando; Mario Baldi, distinguished technologist, Pensando Systems Inc.; Krishna Doddapaneni, vice president of software engineering, Pensando; and Pirabhu Raman, senior director, engineer, Pensando.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Future Proof Your Enterprise event. Neither Pensando Systems Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)