Verizon Communications bought drone management firm Skyward for an undisclosed sum. Skyward is an Oregon-based software startup that said it helps more than 100 companies manage drone operations. The firm targets enterprises that need to deploy multiple drones over several locations.
“Drones are becoming an essential tool for improving business processes at large companies, but scalability has been a challenge,” said Skyward Founder and CEO Jonathan Evans, in a press releases. “Skyward’s drone operations management platform combined with Verizon’s network, reliability, scale and expertise in delivering enterprise solutions will allow organizations to efficiently and safely scale drones across multiple divisions and hundreds of use cases.”
Mike Lanman, SVP for enterprise products and internet of things at Verizon, said the acquisition builds on the carrier’s previous announcement of airborne LTE operations. As part of that announcement, Verizon said that as early as this year it would launch a suite of services on its ThingSpace IoT platform to help developers and businesses create and manage ALO-enabled applications backed by cloud and analytics capabilities.
“This acquisition is a natural progression of our core focus on operating in innovative, high-growth markets, leveraging our network, scale, fleet management, device management, data analytics and security enablement capabilities and services to simplify the drone industry and help support the adoption of IoT,” Lanman said.
Skyward, which counts Draper Associates and Voyager Capital among its investors, has been part of the Verizon Ventures portfolio.
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