SDN Startup Midokura Taps VMware Cloud Vet As Global Sales Lead

Buzzed-about software-defined networking startup Midokura tapped VMware veteran Jim Lenox as its new vice president of worldwide sales.

Lenox will be tasked with building out Midokura's global presence and accelerating sales of MidoNet, the SDN startup's flagship network virtualization platform.

"It's really about making Midokura's technology more available worldwide. We have the advantage in our corporate structure and how we are built to already have significant points of presence in the U.S., Asia and Europe," Lenox told CRN. "But we want to start being more available and start to solve customer problems related to their virtual infrastructures."

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Lenox is joining Midokura after a 13-year stint at VMware, where he most recently served as senior director of cloud services sales. In that role, he was responsible for driving field and partner sales of VMware's infrastructure cloud services.

As he settles into his new role, Lenox said one of his priorities will be building out a partner base to drive adoption of Midokura's MidoNet platform.

"My roots are in the channel," Lenox told CRN. "We are packaging things in a way that we can definitely sell through and take advantage of the solution provider channel so that they can take advantage of us."

MidoNet is a distributed, decentralized, and multilayer software-defined virtual network solution. The platform, according to Midokura, is specifically designed for Infrastructure-as-a-Service environments and adds a level of automation that significantly reduces both the opex and capex costs of managing a network.

The platform essentially decouples a user's cloud assets from its network infrastructure, creating a software abstraction layer programmed to act as a go-between between end hosts and the physical network, the company said. In other words, MidoNet allows users to virtualize their network stacks and more easily leverage multivendor, physical network appliances in a software-based domain.

Midokura this week rolled out the latest version of Midonet, which adds features including Layer 2 gateway integration and management tools that let users trace the route of their virtual network traffic.

Midokura, founded in 2010 and based in Tokyo, made its debut in the U.S. market last year. The company has roughly 35 employees and this year secured $17.3 million in Series A funding, a financial boost it will use to fuel its go-to-market strategy and R&D.

PUBLISHED OCT. 30, 2013