Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN) says its Cloud Xpress 2 data center interconnect (DCI) platform has reached the general availability stage. The company adds that examples of the system have found a home in the networks of "major" internet content providers (ICPs) it did not identify.
Cloud Xpress 2 is the second generation of Infinera's Cloud Xpress family. It leverages the optical transport systems vendor's Infinite Capacity Engine to support 1.2-Tbps superchannel transmission via a 1RU platform and as much as 27.6 Tbps on a single fiber pair when the output of multiple platforms is combined (see "Infinera Cloud Xpress 2 sports Infinite Capacity Engine for data center interconnect"). The Cloud Xpress 2 offers use of multiple modulation formats via Infinera's FlexCoherent Processor, in-flight wire-speed data encryption, and the benefits of the company's Instant Bandwidth capabilities.
Infinera unveiled the first generation of the Cloud Xpress in 2014 and launched the trend toward purpose-built DCI platforms (see "Infinera tackles metro on two fronts" and "Infinera adds 100GbE, SDN protocol and encryption support to Cloud Xpress family"). The company plans to continue to sell the first-generation system alongside Cloud Xpress 2 for customers who don't require the latter system's horsepower. Infinera will market the Cloud Xpress portfolio to cloud service providers, ICPs, internet exchange service providers, enterprise network operators, and other large-scale data center operators.
"Infinera raised the bar in the industry with the Cloud Xpress, beating its competition to the market with a platform purpose-built for DCI," said Andrew Schmitt, founder and lead analyst at Cignal AI. "The general availability of the Cloud Xpress 2 places Infinera in a leadership position to continue meeting the challenging technical, cost, and high-volume requirements of cloud and content provider networks."
Schmitt expects DCI platform sales to provide a significant catalyst for the optical systems industry in 2017 (see "Demand for 100G+ coherent WDM shifting away from China: Cignal AI").
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