IoTium, the first secure network infrastructure company for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), today announced that it has closed $8.39 million in Series A financing. This investment is led by March Capital Partners and GE Ventures. The round is also joined by Pankaj Patel, former executive vice president and chief development officer at Cisco; OpenSource Ventures, and Juniper Networks. The company will use the capital to accelerate its successes in building and industrial automation verticals, and expand its footprint in the oil and gas, transportation and smart city industries with its flagship Network as a Service (NaaS) solution which was also announced today.

"The biggest problem impacting the uptake of the IIoT at scale is security and deployment complexity," said Ron Victor, founder and CEO of IoTium. "With the help of our new investment partners, we are enabling the expansion of IIoT by making it possible for any type of organization to securely connect legacy mission critical industrial assets to the cloud with minimal IT intervention and absolutely no changes to enterprise security policy."

IndustryARC research predicts the Industrial IoT (IIOT) market will reach $123.89B by 2021.The ability to extract data from machinery, communicate this information to the cloud and achieve improvements in operations through data analysis is transforming the way organizations do business. Yet legacy on-site systems in industrial environments were not designed to connect to cloud based applications.

"The opportunity for IIoT is now. Companies have lagged on adoption, but will soon lose out if they do not take advantage of the benefits IIoT has to offer," said Sumant Mandal, Managing Director, March Capital Partners. "IoTium's technology virtually negates the most prevalent adoption barriers of security and scalability to make IIoT an easy reality for customers in almost any market."

"It takes a vision for change, coupled with the right expertise, to see an opportunity and deliver the right product at the right time within a market," said Abhishek Shukla, Managing Director of Software Investments, GE Ventures. "Ron's team has the deep expertise and experience in networking and security to propel the IIoT forward, enabling customers to realize the immense potential and financial benefits possible."

"Throughout my career, I've experienced deployment complexities when it comes to scalability and security," said Pankaj Patel, former executive vice president and chief development officer at Cisco. "IoTium offers a sleek, simple way to overcome these complexities and bring the value of the IIoT to market, enabling companies to connect, discover and control all the devices on their network. As part of the IoTium board of directors through this investment, I look forward to expanding the reach of impact of IoTium's solution."

"IoTium is an exciting company emerging from The Fabric's co-creation platform. We are happy to have worked with the team from the inception in creating the vision and help grow it into this terrific company," said Rajan Raghavan, CEO, The Fabric. "Ron Victor is known for his success in building companies and recognizing market opportunities. We're excited to be a part of helping Ron found and grow IoTium. We look forward to IoTium's further success in enabling companies to more easily benefit from the IIoT."

To learn more about IoTium and its technology, visit www.iotium.io.

About IoTium
IoTium is the first secure network infrastructure company for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Headquartered in Silicon Valley and backed by GE Ventures, March Capital, and Juniper Networks, IoTium was founded with the understanding that secure connections matter. The company's patented technology enables a Network as a Service (NaaS) solution to securely connect legacy onsite systems to cloud-based applications, allowing building and industrial automation, oil & gas, manufacturing, transportation and smart city industries to realize the promise of Industry 4.0. For more information, visit: http://www.iotium.io.

About March Capital Partners
March Capital Partners is a Santa Monica-based venture capital firm with one of the largest global funds in Southern California. Founded by industry veterans with over 50 years of investing experience, March Capital is unique in the Southern California market with its active investments in both early and late-stage companies in mobile, enterprise, infrastructure, gaming and other growth industries. The majority of March Capital's investments are with Southern California companies, with targeted positions in innovative global organizations. For more information, see www.marchcp.com.

About GE Ventures
GE Ventures identifies, scales and accelerates ideas that will help make the world work better. Focused on the areas of software, advanced manufacturing, energy and health care, GE Ventures combines equity investing, new business creation, licensing and technology transfer to deliver an innovation platform designed to drive growth for partners and GE. For more information, visit http://www.geventures.com, or follow on Twitter (@GE_Ventures) and LinkedIn.

About Juniper Networks
Juniper Networks challenges the status quo with products, solutions and services that transform the economics of networking. Our team co-innovates with customers and partners to deliver automated, scalable and secure networks with agility, performance and value. Additional information can be found at Juniper Networks (www.juniper.net) or connect with Juniper on Twitter and Facebook.

About OpenSource Ventures
OpenSource Ventures is a syndicate that invests in both open source, and general software infrastructure deals. For more information on OpenSource Ventures, visit angel.co/open-source-syndicate/syndicate.

About The Fabric
The Fabric deeply collaborates with entrepreneurs to co-create highly innovative and disruptive cloud infrastructure companies. The Fabric team has long entrepreneurial experience, success track-record, as well as deep relevant domain expertise, which enables the creation of break-through cloud infrastructure companies. The Fabric has co-created several successful companies. More details on The Fabric and the co-created companies can be found at www.thefabricnet.com.