Often I am asked about what makes Cog Systems different, and how that will matter in the long term. By this point, this is an easy question for me – and the answer is as elegant as it is obvious.

So, first, I suggest we all take a quick quiz. What is the single piece of technology that underpins the cloud computing revolution?

The answer is Type 1 Virtualization.

Think about the problem of those days in the WinTel Server world. All that unused capacity sitting there with no one to use it (something like an average server utilization rate of 38%). As further reinforcement, we look at the great story of AWS where they had to design their data centers to meet the demand of the holiday season, but then they were stuck. What were they going to do with that extra capacity the other 11 months of the year?

Meanwhile, someone else at the time is asking the question – why do I need a single server for each corporate application?

And do you know where that question got solved? That is right – our friends in Ft. Meade did a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with a small company at the time called VMWare. They wanted to solve a simple problem – how to run high and low side email on one PC versus two separate devices. And have all the assurance that the security was top notch. Well – between them – they solved it – and the first step in Cloud Computing was taken.

So, the WinTel Virtualization folks decide to apply this solution to the Enterprise Market – and while ultimately the problem they were trying to solve was increasing the utilization rate for the existing servers, what did they get as a bonus – security. Brilliant. And – with the two combined: Full Utilization and Security – Cloud Computing was born.

Fast forward, now we all just take it for granted that Cloud Computing is easy. Heck – Coke and Pepsi are probably running on the same server at AWS and never know it. One of them could even write crappy code and crash their site and the other one would never know it. Great model – maximizing utilization for AWS, low costs and high flexability for the enterprise customer – and top notch security.

So, let us ask the logical follow-on question. Why has no one take this same logical extension of value into the ARM ecosystem?

Simple – because it is hard. Type 1 Virtualization requires you port down to the chip and up to the OS. Easy in a 1-1 environment like WinTel; but when you look at the ARM ecosystem – oh boy – now it is a Many-Many environment. Again – exponentially harder.

This is the basic premise behind the D4 Secure Platform.  Cog Systems has found a way to make it easy.

Cog Systems focuses on bringing Type 1 Virtualization to ARM (because of its market share of connected devices).  But, we do not stop there – we build a full solution on top of the Type 1 Virtualization that allows our customers to deploy a solution to their Connected Devices faster – a ‘jump start’ kit if you will.   It is our view that virtualization in and of itself is just a component in the broader ecosystem of a solution that delivers the real value for our OEM customers.   Ultimately, this is what allows Cog Systems to bring in-parallax security and utilization/ productivity to their connect devices.

In closing, with the rise in Connected Devices powered by ARM (and ever more powerful Connected Devices every day) – the need for optimizing the utilization rate on the device while having top notch security will become just as essential to the connected device market tomorrow as it is for the cloud computing folks today.