Elma Electronic Releases Industry’s First VNX+ (VITA 90) Deployment Kit to Accelerate Mission Application Development
Key Highlights
- Provides a pre-assembled, lightweight (under six lbs) VITA 90-based deployment platform with flexible expansion modules including GPU, FPGA, and high-speed I/O.
- Supports open standards like SOSA, MIL-STD-810, MIL-STD-461, and MIL-STD-704, ensuring compatibility and long-term support for mission-critical applications.
- Features a rugged chassis with integrated power supply, out-of-band management, and a comprehensive cabling kit for seamless development and field deployment.
- Built with a familiar OpenVPX-like architecture, enabling rapid transition from system integration to qualification and deployment.
- Ideal for applications such as drones, unmanned systems, wearables, and C4ISR edge nodes requiring compact, rugged, and high-performance embedded solutions.
FREMONT, Calif., Sept 2026 – Elma Electronic has released the rugged VersaPLUS Deployment Kit, the first VNX+ application-ready kit available that facilitates the integration, qualification and deployment of systems based on the VITA 90 small form factor standard.
Available off-the-shelf, the Deployment Kit seamlessly enables development-to-deployment within the same system, bringing compact, mission-ready applications to market at a fraction of the time typically needed to deliver an embedded computing system. Specific applications include drones, unmanned ground and maritime systems, wearables and dismounted systems as well as C4ISR edge nodes.
Weighing less than six lbs, the kit comes pre-assembled and configured with a Raspberry Pi CM5- based VNX+ single board computer, giving developers access to a mature Linux ecosystem. An additional payload slot allows for different expansion modules, including GPU, FPGA or high-speed I/O, depending on the intended application.
Mark Littlefield, Director, Embedded Technology, for Elma Electronic, stated, “Architecturally, VNX+ follows the same design principles as OpenVPX, giving developers a familiar baseline when working on small form factor systems. VersaPLUS builds on that familiarity by providing a streamlined path for VNX+ application development to quickly move from integration to qualification to field deployment.”
The VersaPLUS features a chassis and backplane aligned to SOSA to support open standards-based upgrades and facilitate rapid technology insertion as well as ensure a long lifecycle support.
The VersaPLUS also includes a 320W power supply in a dedicated VITA 90.3 PSU slot and a VITA 46.11 Tier-3 Chassis Manager with an integrated maintenance port aggregator that provides out-of-band management through the front panel.
The included cabling kit breaks out each rugged front panel connector into a commercial I/O interface for use with standard lab equipment during system development.
The Kit’s architecture features a 40GBASE-KR4 Data Plane, a 10GBASE-KR Control Plane and a PCIe Gen4 Expansion Plane. VersaPLUS is qualified to MIL-STD-810, MIL-STD-461, MIL-STD-704, MIL-STD-1257 and D0-160.
For more information, visit https://products.elma.com/products/versaplus-deployment-kit-off-the-shelf-application-ready-vita-90-vnx-system or please contact us at (510) 656-3400 or [email protected].
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About Elma Electronic: Elma Electronic is a global manufacturer of rugged embedded hardware building blocks and fully integrated subsystems and application-ready platforms that provide solutions deployed in harsh environments found in defense and heavy industrial applications.
Elma leverages proven technology based on open standards architectures such as OpenVPX, SOSA®, VNX+, and VME. Elma is actively engaged in the development of these standards and uses them to design embedded integrated hardware and software solutions.
Elma Electronic manages entire projects from initial system architecture to specification, design, manufacturing and test through its worldwide production facilities and sales offices. The company serves the military & aerospace, industrial, and communications markets and is certified to ISO 9001 and AS 9100.
With one of the widest product ranges available in the embedded industry, Elma also offers standard and custom cabinets and enclosures as well as precision rotary switches/encoders.
Elma’s U.S. headquarters are in Fremont, Calif., with sales, engineering and manufacturing operations in Atlanta, Ga., and Philadelphia, Pa.

