To protect product integrity, Mender component orchestration ensures that the entire multi-component system operates in harmony.
Palo Alto, California, USA, October 27, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Northern.tech, the company behind Mender, today announced the launch of component orchestration in Mender, enabling consistent and secure management of the entire software stack of connected products. Beyond the traditional “one image, one device” update approach, component orchestration maintains a single desired state across the entire product—covering processors, microcontrollers (MCUs), operating systems, applications, AI models, and more. Whether deploying via over-the-air (OTA) updates, in isolated environments, or within secure air-gapped networks, Mender’s component orchestration helps manufacturers easily ensure that entire connected products operate in a fully consistent and synchronized manner, reducing engineering complexity, maintenance demands, unplanned downtime, and operational risk.
Connected products are no longer single devices or single software images. As 90% of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) manage multi-component products, updating individual components alone is no longer sufficient; relying on traditional software update mechanisms creates infrastructure bottlenecks, delays product time-to-market, and introduces risks to product integrity, compliance, and security.
For example, the Zephyr Project, under the Linux Foundation, is building a secure, connected, and flexible real-time operating system for resource-constrained devices. As connected products integrate Zephyr-based microcontrollers with other processors, operating systems, and applications, coordinating updates between these components is critical to maintaining product integrity. Kate Stewart, Vice President of Trusted Embedded Systems at the Linux Foundation, said: “Connected products consist of components with different architectures, software, and update requirements. Keeping these parts compatible and secure with each update can place a significant burden on engineering teams. We welcome Mender’s component orchestration into the Zephyr ecosystem to help manufacturers manage their products, enabling them to update with confidence while preserving integrity throughout the product lifecycle.”
Today, manufacturers must manually map and sequence every horizontal and vertical dependency between components, verify hardware and software compatibility, coordinate update orders, and ensure the security of the entire product system. Without component orchestration, updating individual components separately is no longer feasible.
Simplified and secure software management to protect product integrity
Nearly three-fifths of OEMs expect their existing device management infrastructure to become inadequate within three years or less. Traditional software update infrastructures designed for simpler products can no longer meet the demands of today’s advanced products.
“Connected products involve vertical dependencies that affect the update steps of individual components, as well as horizontal dependencies that require compatible versions of related systems to be running—such as due to changes in local communication protocols,” explains Eystein Stenberg, Chief Technology Officer at Northern.tech. “Mender simplifies software management in a secure and robust manner, eliminating the risks associated with updating modern, multi-component connected systems.”
Component orchestration brings three key improvements to OEMs:
- Unified product software management. Ensures product integrity. Integrate and coordinate updates across components without requiring each internal component to run the same operating system or heavy software client. Deploy software configurations as a single atomic unit to prevent incompatible or mismatched software states, eliminate manual coordination, and reduce the risk of failure.
- The system performs an atomic rollback, reducing maintenance costs and operational risks. If an update fails, Mender automatically triggers a “all-or-nothing” rollback across the entire product architecture, leveraging existing rollback mechanisms or implementing one if none exist. This fail-safe execution immediately safeguards product integrity and eliminates the risk of downtime caused by partial or corrupted configurations.
- End-to-end lifecycle security. Accelerate EU CRA compliance. While manufacturers recognize the importance of device-level security, compliance requirements mandate the management and tracking of every individual component within the product architecture. Mender automatically maintains an audit-ready view of the entire internal software state, providing a verifiable, searchable software bill of materials (SBOM), with real-time validation throughout the entire active lifecycle.
Ensure a secure, connected future
Anna-Lena Marx, Yocto Project Ambassador and Embedded Systems Developer at Inovex, said: “We are indeed seeing an increase in challenges around component orchestration, especially when combining Yocto and Zephyr—requirements that are becoming increasingly common and are being implemented in modern system designs. So far, managing updates for additional components has typically meant relying on custom scripts or extending the update process through Mender state scripts. A declarative approach is a very interesting development, as it enables us to further decouple dependencies between engineering teams. Of course, the ongoing challenge will be defining meaningful declarative states and thoroughly testing all possible combinations.”
By managing complex, multi-component connected products as a single, coordinated system, Mender helps manufacturers accelerate time-to-market and eliminate post-launch liability risks. With component orchestration, engineering teams can securely coordinate synchronized software deployments across heterogeneous architectures—from microcontrollers to AI models—without worrying about bricked hardware or state mismatches.
About Mender
Mender provides robust, secure, and customizable over-the-air (OTA) software updates for smart devices. For over a decade, Mender has enabled OTA software updates for more than one million devices worldwide and boasts a proven customer base including Fortune 1000 companies such as Airbus, Lyft, Volkswagen, Siemens, Thales, and ZF Group.
Learn more about OTA software update management.
Mender is developed and maintained by Northern.tech. Founded in 2008, Northern.tech is a leader in device lifecycle management, with a mission to secure connected devices worldwide.
Media contact: Larisa Bogomolov
[email protected]