Xyte Announces Cloud Services Breakthrough

Xyte has announced that it has secured funding of $6.4m (approx £4.7m), led by Scapital, to launch the first Hardware-as-a-Service cloud platform, and moves hardware industries beyond traditional models to new profitable, subscription-based sales.

Business partners Omer Brookstein and Boris Dinkevich came from two very separate industries on the way to founding Xyte, the innovative company behind the first Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS) cloud platform.

Brookstein, an Audio-Video industry veteran, spent nearly 15 years working in different roles at Crestron Electronics. Dinkevich worked in a much different software development world, where he built advanced cloud applications for large high-tech firms. Their common interest in the cloud as a transformational business driver brought them together to establish Xyte (formerly known as SyncPro) in early 2020.

Xyte offers hardware manufacturers an end-to-end cloud-based platform to run their entire HaaS businesses, better support their channels and customers, and develop new recurring revenue streams. This includes support for what Xyte calls 'Digital Products', an innovative new approach that allows manufacturers to remotely enable device features through subscriptions. Xyte's innovation allows customers to elastically scale their products on one hand, while helping manufacturers simplify their inventory management and capture new upsell opportunities.

Omer Brookstein, CEO of Xyte, said: "Cloud technologies have disrupted nearly every industry. Different industries are renowned for hardware innovation, but there is an enormous gap between hardware suppliers and modern cloud applications and services. Xyte paves the way for hardware suppliers of any industry to modernize their offerings, and provide their integration partners and end customers with technology platforms that will enable new services at an unparalleled time and cost-to-market."

Brookstein adds that while there are many opportunities that hardware manufacturers could pursue for growth, none offer more potential than HaaS. However, many of them struggle to capture this opportunity due to the enormous resources needed to develop such a solution.

Brookstein added: "People often think of HaaS as a subscription-based or financial model. However, successfully operating an HaaS business requires much more. It's a paradigm change from customer acquisition to customer retention, and Xyte offers the complete toolset required to do so, from remotely supporting customers and resolving issues more efficiently through offering managed services, analyzing device usage and more – all in one unified platform."

To support and accelerate the development of the platform, Xyte partnered with SCapital, managed by former Sequoia and Intel Capital partners (Haim Sadger and Aya Peterburg), who led a $6.4M financial round.

Xyte offers a complete platform that truly bridges hardware to the cloud, and invites innovation and business development for all users. That includes offering a new agnostic platform specifically for the professional Audio-Video(AV) industry called Workplace by Xyte. Systems integrators and other service providers, which have free access to the platform, can now offer managed services for their customers, remotely managing and monitoring devices from a growing number of brands.

Brookstein points to a new business model that AV test company MSolutions is developing based on Xyte's platform as an excellent example of its revenue-generating value. The company starts by allowing its customers to subscribe to specific test applications, such as a log analyzer for an HDBaseT installation or IP testing for AV-over-IP applications directly from Xyte's cloud. MSolutions will soon offer a full HaaS model, giving customers access to their award-winning device for a monthly fee, and benefit from full technical support through its dedicated Xyte portal.

"Instead of buying a hardware test device, customers will soon be able to buy test services," said Brookstein. "The customer still has the physical test device through the subscription period, but pays for usage of the applications enabled through Xyte. There is a hardware refresh after a pre-determined period if the subscription remains active; if the device fails, a replacement is shipped. And that customer can activate new test services on the Xyte portal at any time."

Boris Dinkevich, Xyte's CTO, said: "Our open API ensures that anyone can connect to Xyte. Customers today in all industries demand open systems that don't chain the user to proprietary products. Our platform is a wide-open universe that allows everyone to connect, everyone to configure their devices, and everyone to freely develop. There are no limits."

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