OTTAWA, July 6 -- Akara, a provider of optical service management solutions, has secured $30 million in second round funding led by VenGrowth, a Canadaian venture capital firm. Also participating was Corning Innovation Ventures, a division of Corning Inc. that strategically invests in optical networking companies, Dain Rauscher Wessels Morgan Keegan, Presidio Venture Partners LLC, Sumitomo Corporation, and first round investors Battery Ventures and Greylock Partners.
   Akara's optical service management solution, which comprises the Optical Utility Services Platform (OUSP) and Optical Utility Services Manager (OUSM), increases the service providers' and carriers' ability to meet demand for services and applications. The funding will be used to expand operations, customer service, sales and to continue development of future products and services.
   Despite a massive build-up of optical bandwidth in the network core, service providers and carriers have been challenged to transform that bandwidth into the high-value services that the enterprise market is demanding. Akara's OUSP & OUSM enables service providers and carriers to leverage that trapped bandwidth to deliver managed optical services such as remote storage, disaster recovery, video, content distribution and Gbe private line services.