Skykit Spinning Out From Parent Firm Agosto

March 6, 2020 by Dave Haynes

Minneapolis-based digital signage CMS Skykit has announced it is being spun off from its parent company, four years after it was launched by the Google-centric cloud services company Agosto.

“Skykit was born from Agosto’s award-winning innovation in the public cloud,” says Skykit  CEO Irfan Khan. “We always planned to let the company branch out on its own, and we’re thrilled by the product’s rapid market adoption and growth. The focus now is on expanding sales and marketing to accelerate growth while continuing to bring innovation to the market.”

Skykit’s departure from its founding entity, says the PR, will allow Agosto to continue to grow the core business of cloud consulting, cloud resale, and cloud-native development.

Khan remains as CEO of Skykit, with Paul Lundberg as co-founder and CTO,  Linda Hofflander as VP of strategy, global channel and alliances, and Mike Majerus as CFO.

Skykit started out being focused on using Google Chrome as the operating system and Chrome devices as digital signage players, but has more recently evolved into using Android, which is a near cousin.

The Skykit CMS is certified to run on AOPEN’s commercial Chrome devices, but also on Philips D Line Android SoC displays, and with Elo Android-powered SoC touch displays and Elo’s Backpack Android compute engine.

The company sells primarily through the channel.

I have no idea if this is a big deal, or an exercise encouraged by lawyers and/or tax accountants. Skykit understandably leveraged Agosto’s two decades of business ties to Google during its early days to control costs and open doors. The Google association undoubtedly opened some doors early on.

Presumably, the management team feels it is in a good place to break off and go it alone.