Bare-metal SDN vendor Pica8 said today it raised $12.5 million Series B funding, bringing its total funding to date to more than $20 million.

Investment is led by VantagePoint Capital Partners, Cross Head and Pacific Venture Partners.

"You just don't get money in Silicon Valley unless you're doing something right. We've done something that showed VCs we're making progress and we have customers willing to stand up for us," says Pica8 Inc. marketing VP Steve Garrison. The second round of funding is a natural step toward an eventual IPO. (See Breakfast With... Pica8's Steve Garrison, Pica8 Claims OpenFlow 1.4 First and Pica8 Adds Muscle to ABC – 'Anybody But Cisco'.)

Pica8 has 320 customers, with 30% of revenue and customers in Japan, where there is a lot of SDN activity.

Cross Head provides business investment, training and system integration expertise to support revenue-building in Japan.

Pacific Venture Partners, based in Taipei, strengthens Pica8's connections to ODM manufacturers in Taiwan which build the switches that Pica8's software runs on.

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And Vantage Point returns after investing as Series A lead.

Pica8 makes PicOS, a network operating system to run commodity bare-metal hardware as SDN switches. It faces potential threats from HP Inc. (NYSE: HPQ), Dell Technologies (Nasdaq: DELL) and a host of other companies and startups providing bare-metal switches and SDN software. But Garrison says Pica8 doesn't see those companies as threats. SDN is designed to provide customers with choice among multiple hardware and software vendors, and that choice doesn't exist unless multiple players are in the game.

— Mitch Wagner, , West Coast Bureau Chief, Light Reading. Got a tip about SDN or NFV? Send it to [email protected].