Verizon has announced it has purchased Skyward, a private drone software vendor, in an effort to build its capabilities in the fast growing drone market.

Skyward has already established operations in the States and internationally, and helps Verizon expand its IoT proposition. The main selling point for Verizon will be built around the message businesses can integrate, manage and wirelessly connect their drone operations in one place.

“Last quarter we announced our strategy to drive innovation and widespread adoption for in-flight wireless connectivity through our Airborne LTE Operations (ALO) initiative, a new service to simplify certification and connectivity of wireless drones,” said Mike Lanman, SVP of Enterprise Products and IoT at Verizon.

“This acquisition is a natural progression of our core focus on operating in innovative, high-growth markets, leveraging our network, scale, fleet management, device management, data analytics and security enablement capabilities and services to simplify the drone industry and help support the adoption of IoT.”

The drone market is one which does offer notable potential due to the wide range of enterprise applications. From agriculture to telecommunications and from industrial construction to film production, businesses are now using drones to improve efficiency and effectiveness of operations. According to research firm Markets and Markets, the drone market will be worth in the region of $21 billion by 2022. North America is expected to be one of the largest markets.

“Drones are becoming an essential tool for improving business processes at large companies, but scalability has been a challenge,” said Skyward CEO Jonathan Evans.

“Skyward’s drone operations management platform combined with Verizon’s network, reliability, scale and expertise in delivering enterprise solutions will allow organizations to efficiently and safely scale drones across multiple divisions and hundreds of use cases.”