Midokura Enters U.S. Market For IaaS Virtualized Networking

Midokura today announced its official entry into the U.S. market with a network virtualization offering geared towards Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platforms. Midokura was founded in 2010 with the intent of building a public cloud in Japan. The company’s cofounders Tatsuya Kayo and Dan Mihai Dumitriu quickly recognized the challenge of building cost-effective, efficient networking infrastructures for cloud platforms and decided to focus on networking solutions for IaaS. Midokura’s virtualization platform, Midonet, decouples the cloud from network hardware by creating an abstraction layer that lies between the physical network and hosts. The resulting environment enables the following benefits:

•Simplified network infrastructure
•High availability
•High scalability
•Simplified and reduced network protocols for data transmission
•Network optimization
•Improved fault tolerance

Midonet delivers a “distributed, de-centralized, multi-layer software defined virtual network solution” that overlies an IP connected network and thrusts network intelligence to the network’s edge. Midonet is integrated with the Essex version of OpenStack and features a plugin for Quantum in addition to Nova network drivers. Midonet’s tight integration with OpenStack means that the product is ready for deployment in enterprise-grade OpenStack installations all over the world.

Jonathon Bryce, Executive Director of the OpenStack Foundation, remarked on Midokura’s contribution to OpenStack as follows:

Companies like Midokura are growing the OpenStack user base by advancing the technology and offering real deployment options. The team that built MidoNet has been active in the OpenStack community, and have been consistently contributing to the project. The ability to extend the OpenStack platform with pluggable networking technologies allows greater innovation and choice for our users.

Because Midokura has “been consistently contributing” to the OpenStack project, it stands well poised to cater to the needs to OpenStack deployments that have differentially drawn upon the OpenStack product and its different versions for their own customized installations. Midokura’s team includes engineers from Amazon, DreamHost, Fulcrum Microsystems, Google, NEC and NTT. The company’s core product, Midonet, will target both cloud service providers as well as enterprises.