Led by infusions from heavyweight customers AT&T and Verizon, Lumina Networks announced today it has raised $10 million in series A financing.  

The first round of funding, which also included Rahi Systems, will allow Lumina Networks to further productize its OpenDaylight-based offerings as well as expand into new regions, such as Japan and Europe, according to Andrew Coward, founder and CEO of Lumina Networks.  

The backing by Verizon and AT&T underscored how much the telcos value Lumina's OpenDaylight-based SDN controller. Lumina emerged from the breakup of Brocade with the latter's SDN controller in hand, which Brocade had spent three years developing, according to Coward.

SDN controllers are crucial for service providers that are working toward virtualizing their networks while also keeping the legacy elements in play during that transition. Brocade's SDN controller emerged as one of the winners of the "controller wars" from a few years back as the telecom industry looked to define which controllers would be adopted.  

"So for the likes of AT&T and Verizon, it's about automation and digitization of their networks and using SDN controllers as a method to do that, which enables them to tie in white boxes and to tie in virtualization technology alongside of that," Coward said.  

Lumina has been able to stand upon the shoulders of AT&T and Verizon's leadership positions in regards to SDN, NFV and virtualization. By taking a "pure" approach using OpenDaylight for its SDN controller, Lumina has proved its value in the marketplace with the deployments to date and gained valuable experience in the process.