Lumina Networks today said it closed its Series A with $10 million in funding. This includes $8 million in new funding led by Verizon Ventures. Other new investors include AT&T and Rahi Systems.

Lumina Networks formed in August 2017 when it spun-off from Brocade. Its focus is on using the open source OpenDaylight software to provide software-defined networking (SDN). “We really feel that the mission of Lumina is to bring SDN-control to traditional networking and white boxes and virtual infrastructure,” said Andrew Coward, founder and CEO of Lumina. “It’s the convergence of SDN in a controlled way.”

The company says it’s seen strong uptake of the Lumina SDN Controller by network operators in the first nine months of operations, with revenues more than double their pre-spinoff Brocade levels.

It’s notable that both Verizon and AT&T are investing in the same company, in the same round. Both carriers were customers of Brocade that moved over to Lumina.

“SDN has emerged as a key architectural model in delivering the promised goals of next generation wireless networks such as 5G,” said Alexander Khalin, director at Verizon Ventures, in a statement.

And Chris Rice, senior vice president at AT&T Labs for Domain 2.0 architecture, said in a statement, “SDN is at the heart of our network transformation, and we’ve committed to virtualizing and software-controlling 75 percent of our core network functions by 2020.”

Lumina helps service providers to not only introduce SDN to their networks, but to help them integrate it with their legacy infrastructure. “Getting the legacy network on SDN is really the hard work,” said Coward. “We think of so many other companies that have claimed this SDN title, but they are really layering on top of this existing infrastructure. Our job is convergent.”

For example, when Coward talked about Lumina’s SD-Core product, which it introduced in October 2017, he explained that it allows service providers to cap their investments in MPLS and slowly migrate to the SD-core.

Lumina will use its Series A funds to support the development of new products using its Lumina SDN Controller. And it will also use the funds to expand its business in other regions. “We’re going to spend time and resources in Europe and particularly in Japan,” said Coward. “We already have Australia, and Japan is the next logical market.”