10gen, the sponsor of the NoSQL MongoDB open source, document-oriented database, had two major announcements today.  One is a hefty round of funding, and the second is the launch of the second version of its offering.

The company raised $20 million in a funding round led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from existing investors Flybridge Capital and Union Square Ventures. This brings 10gen’s total funding to $31.4 million.  The company will use the new capital to expand abroad:

“The infusion of capital will enable the company to meet growing global demand for MongoDB across enterprises, media, gaming and government organizations by expanding customer service and research and development in Europe and Asia, and the addition of new offices in Ireland and the United Kingdom.”

Erik Frieberg has been recruited as the company’s new head of marketing and ailliances.

10gen’s second and biggest development today, announced very shortly after the news of the funding round, is the launch of the second version of MongoDB.  Version 2.0 features some initial  concurrency improvements, according to an official post on the company’s blog. Indexes are 25 percent faster and smaller, according to 10gen, and authentication works with shared clusters now.

A growing number of organizations are starting to make use of their big data, and additional ones want to further optimize that process. So far 10gen, which generates its revenue by offering support to developers using its free platform, has gained itself 400 customers including SAP, Intuit, Craigslist and many more. But it’s not the only one competing in this space.

In addition to smaller players, the more established members of the open-source community are jumping on the NoSQL bandwagon. Red Hat plans to acquire a NoSQL or Hadoop company in the near future and become competitive in this field in the near term.