The funding is in response to continued demand for its award-winning network virtualization technology Midokura Enterprise MidoNet (MEM).

Series B funding participation came from Japanese Fintech company Simplex Inc., and existing investors Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ) and Allen Miner, a member of Midokura's board of directors. The new funding brings Midokura's total investment to over $44 million to date.

'Midokura aims to fundamentally transform and automate networking for any public, private or hybrid cloud and container deployment. We are delighted to have the support of our investors in our $20 million Series B funding round, and are poised to build upon our success,' said Dan Dumitriu, co-founder and CEO of Midokura. 'We look forward to further developing our globally adopted MEM network virtualization technology to support the world's appetite for microservices and IoT connected devices, as well as growing our team, strategic business partnerships and valuable channel alliances.'

Midokura technology is the network overlay of choice for the enterprise and a leader in the container orchestration ecosystem. The new round of funding will be used to address market demand to continue to provide 24/7 enterprise-grade support for its globally popular MEM solution. Specifically, funds will be used to build upon and accelerate product development, expand the company's executive and development teams and secure new partnerships with industry leaders.

As leading organizations, including Midokura customers Blue Jeans Networks, Overstock.com, Puppet and SysEleven, and Midokura partners including Dell and Fujitsu continue to rapidly adopt OpenStack and container orchestration ecosystems, the demand for network virtualization or Software Defined Networking (SDN) solutions, such as MEM, to make the most of their investments, continues to grow. According to IDC, the global SDN market will have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 53.9 percent from 2014 to 2020 and will be worth nearly $12.5 billion in 2020.1

'The network is the enabler of a connected lifestyle, including connected cars and connected devices,' says Tatsuya Kato, co-founder and chairman of Midokura. 'With the wholesale re-imagination of global industries, from commerce to financial, travel and transportation, software gives rise to a new class of applications that demands higher levels of network agility and performance. Midokura is on a mission to deliver on the demand via our unique approach to network virtualization and make MidoNet the preferred virtual networking solution everywhere.'

Midokura's MEM technology offers an intelligent, software-based network abstraction layer between the hosts and the physical network, by decoupling the IaaS cloud from the network hardware. In turn, operators can build isolated networks in software to overlay the existing hardware-based network infrastructure. The open source version of its core MidoNet technology is quickly gaining in popularity among organizations of all sizes in more 120 countries.

Supporting Quotes
'Network virtualization and SDN is a huge market poised for exponential growth. Midokura has a savvy executive team focused on staying on the forefront of this market. A game-changing vision, laser-like focus and A-team are the tenets of a great startup, and this is what I see in Midokura. The company continues to disrupt the market, and I look forward to its future successes.'
-- Allen Miner, Investor and Board Member, Midokura

'Simplex Inc. has been providing IT solution services to help major Japanese financial companies drive profit-making activities since the company was founded in 1997. Through our investment in Midokura, a global company who offers cutting-edge network virtualization technologies, we are excited to now offer even more value-added services to this community.'
-- Hideki Kaneko, CEO, Simplex Inc.

'As a lead investor, INCJ has been supporting the Midokura team, who have been innovating with its unique network virtualization software technology in the SDN market. With this Series B funding, I am excited to see Midokura enter the next stage of the company to strengthen its product competitiveness and to expand its business globally, not only becoming a leading startup founded in Japan.'
-- Mikihide Katsumata, President, Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ)

'As enterprises worldwide pursue digital transformation, they inevitably realize that the underlying network infrastructure must also be transformed significantly. Network virtualization and SDN provide the network with the agility and flexibility it needs to support hybrid cloud initiatives and next-generation workloads based on containers and microservices. As a network virtualization vendor, Midokura understands these market dynamics and customer requirements, and this new round of funding will help it scale the business accordingly.'
-- Brad Casemore, Director of Research for Datacenter Networking, IDC

About Midokura
Founded in 2010, Midokura was an early global leader in network virtualization. The company's pedigree includes Amazon, Cisco, Google and VMware. With its Midokura Enterprise MidoNet (MEM) solution, Midokura offers the industry a complete overlay technology that integrates with cloud platforms, such as OpenStack. Now gaining awareness in 122 countries, the source code for MidoNet is freely available at www.midonet.org. MidoNet delivers the first truly open, vendor-agnostic network virtualization solution available to the OpenStack community. Midokura is a contributing member of the OpenStack Networking (Neutron) Project and the Kuryr Project.

Midokura has offices in San Francisco, Tokyo and Barcelona, and is on the web at www.midokura.com. Follow us on Twitter: @midokura.

About Simplex Inc.
Simplex provide the financial IT solutions focused on 'the realm of Financial Frontier', which we define as the IT investment where financial companies strategically focus to maximize their profit. In capital markets, we provide wide variety of dealing applications covering most financial products such as the front-middle system which was chosen by major banks and the bond front-system which was adopted by eight (8) major securities companies. In retail, Simplex is proud to have the No.1 market share to provide FX (foreign exchange margin transactions) systems with the most advanced dealing engine.

About Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ)
INCJ was established in July 2009 as a public-private partnership that provides financial, technological and management support for next-generation businesses. INCJ specifically supports those projects that combine technologies and varied expertise across industries and materialize open innovation. INCJ has the capacity to invest up to ¥2 trillion (approx. US $20 billion).

INCJ's management team is drawn from the private sector with diverse experience in investment, technologies and management. Through its Innovation Network Committee, INCJ assesses investment opportunities that contribute to industrial innovation in Japan in line with criteria set by the government.