Ciena Corp. (NASDAQ: CIEN) and Saudi operator Etihad Etisalat have announced the launch of Mobily Advanced Connectivity Services (ACS), which is aimed at the enterprise and public sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Mobily ACS is designed to deliver a range of packet-optical and Optical Transport Network (OTN) services with secure, highly redundant, and flexible bandwidth (scaling from 1 Gbps to 1 Tbps). It provides “bandwidth-on-demand” connectivity for financial, government, healthcare, education, information technology, and manufacturing sector clients.
Based on Ciena’s OPn architecture, Mobily is able to adjust network capacity in real time to meet changing business needs more quickly and enable access to cloud-based services with lower latency, enhanced resiliency, and lower costs, Ciena asserts. For example, this will allow an enterprise to access cloud-based services and securely coordinate IT applications, such as virtual machine migrations, improving user experience, productivity, and business continuity, the systems house explains.
ACS enables high-performance applications such as storage, large databases and data warehouses, storage backup systems and recovery systems, synchronous and asynchronous network-based storage requirements. It also includes wavelength, Carrier Ethernet, and private-line services as well as international GDE and international IPLC.
Mobily’s ACS services are enabled by the company’s next-generation network that leverages Ciena’s portfolio – including converged packet optical, OTN, packet networking, and OneControl unified management system, as well as support from Ciena’s Network Transformation Solutions practice. Ciena and Mobily have been working together since the provider’s inception (see, for example, “Mobily selects Ciena for next-generation network in Middle East”), and in December 2013, the two companies completed a live 1-Tbps field trial across Riyadh (see “Ciena conducts terabit field trial with Saudi Arabia’s Mobily”).
The fastest growing ICT service provider in Saudi Arabia, Mobily owns more than 40% of the country’s mobile market. The collaboration with Ciena enables Mobily to extract additional value from its network and can help Mobily to grow its market share in the enterprise segment, the two parties believe.
“Mobily has transformed the mobile market in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and is equally determined to carry this change through to the enterprise connectivity market,” said Mohammed Basafi, chief technology officer at Mobily. “Our partnership with Ciena is making this transformation possible; not only through its technology, but more importantly, its ability to decipher the challenges we face in our business and with our end customers and turn them into growth opportunities.”
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