Midokura Scores $20.4M Funding for Cloud NetworkingMidokura Scores $20.4M Funding for Cloud Networking

Looks to grow beyond roots, as private cloud may lack a long-term future.

Mitch Wagner, Executive Editor, Light Reading

June 8, 2016

3 Min Read
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Midokura on Wednesday announced a $20.4 million series B funding round. But even as it banks the bucks, it's looking at whether private cloud -- foundational to Midokura's business -- lacks legs.

Midokura Enterprise MidoNet (MEM) is a software network that runs on top of a variety of vendors' hardware networks -- in other words, an "overlay" SDN network -- used with OpenStack private clouds. Customers include Blue Jeans Networks, Overstock.com and Puppet.

Midokura announced on Wednesday that it received funding from Japanese fintech company Simplex Inc., as well as previous investors Innovation Network Corp. of Japan and Allen Miner, a Midokura director. The new funding brings Midokura's total bankroll to more than $44 million. (See Midokura Announces $20M Series B Funding.)

Midokura earmarked the funds for product development, expanding executive and development teams and new partnerships.

MEM, which is available in open source or in a production version directly from Midokura, provides an abstraction layer between hosts and physical network, decoupling the IaaS cloud from network hardware.

One of the uses to which Midokura plans to put its new funding round is figuring out a life beyond private cloud, Dan Mihai Dumitriu, CEO and co-founder, tells Light Reading.

Midokura sees a possibility that enterprises might move workloads to the public cloud in a few years -- or at least to hybrid clouds, with public cloud as the majority.

"If somebody were to make a 100% full-on bet on private on-premises infrastructure today, they would be unwise," Dumitriu says.

Midokura's marketing is focused on private clouds now, but is "moving in a different direction," Dumitriu says. As part of that, Midokura is working on support for containers, which often do not run on-premises.

Midokura is moving into container orchestration-as-a-service, Dumitriu says.

"Enterprise customers want to reinvent their business infrastructure, going to market faster. OpenStack fulfills some of that at the infrastructure level, with some self-service and automation, but it doesn't do much for the applications," says the Midokura CEO. A VM is a virtualized server, but a container is more lightweight, with greater potential for business agility.

"It's still very early in the container space, but it seems like it has the potential to have a bigger market impact than virtual machines," Dumitriu says.

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Midokura has 50 employees, holding steady for about a year, with revenue between $1 million and $10 million. At its funding level, Midokura can continue to operate for at least two years, depending on whether it expands operations, Dumitriu says.

Midokura sees adoption mostly in North America, with some in Europe and America. Adoption is with a mix of industries, including service providers, web companies doing SaaS and industrials and healthcare, Dumitriu says.

Competitors include VMware, Juniper and PlumGrid. Although other competitors on paper include Nokia, through its Nuage unit and Cisco, Dumitriu says Midokura never sees those companies going against Midokura for customers.

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— Mitch Wagner, Follow me on TwitterVisit my LinkedIn profile, Editor, Light Reading Enterprise Cloud.

About the Author

Mitch Wagner

Executive Editor, Light Reading

San Diego-based Mitch Wagner is many things. As well as being "our guy" on the West Coast (of the US, not Scotland, or anywhere else with indifferent meteorological conditions), he's a husband (to his wife), dissatisfied Democrat, American (so he could be President some day), nonobservant Jew, and science fiction fan. Not necessarily in that order.

He's also one half of a special duo, along with Minnie, who is the co-habitor of the West Coast Bureau and Light Reading's primary chewer of sticks, though she is not the only one on the team who regularly munches on bark.

Wagner, whose previous positions include Editor-in-Chief at Internet Evolution and Executive Editor at InformationWeek, will be responsible for tracking and reporting on developments in Silicon Valley and other US West Coast hotspots of communications technology innovation.

Beats: Software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), IP networking, and colored foods (such as 'green rice').

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