Sonet vendors finally play well with others
Stephen M. Hardy
Editor in Chief
The point of exhibiting at a trade show is to attract attention. Companies routinely spend thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars on elaborate booth displays designed to distract your attention from the competitor down the aisle. This competitor usually has spent an amount equivalent to the gross national product of Burkina Faso on a high-tech presentation featuring bright lights, loud music, and a ceaselessly energetic troupe of young performers who attempt to illustrate the concept of wavelength-division multiplexing via interpretive dance.
It all can get rather oppressive for the average show attendee, but that`s the risk you take when you accept one of those "free registration" cards vendors send you in the mail.
However, if you had used your free pass to get into last month`s supercomm, you`d have been hard pressed to find what may have been the most interesting booth on the floor. Tucked away on the back row of the exhibit area, completely hidden in the shadow of a booth that called to mind what the Great Pyramid would have looked like had it been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the Sonet Interoperability Forum demonstrated that the fiber-optic networking community may finally be learning the lesson computer hardware and networking vendors discovered long ago: The days of totally proprietary solutions are over.
Sonet arrived in the late 1980s with the promise of such multivendor capability. There are any number of reasons to explain why it has taken nearly 10 years for that promise to near fruition; differing interpretations of standards and a willy-nilly rush to bring products to market represent two possible explanations. But certainly some vendors saw potential interoperability problems as a powerful trump card to play when their customers began flirting with their competitors.
So why are companies suddenly embracing interoperability? The current telecommunications environment increasingly makes single-vendor networks untenable. As telecommunications service providers continue to merge, they`ll want to link their respective pre-existing fiber-optic plant without replacing networking equipment. Meanwhile, as Sonet providers push the technology away from the backbone and closer to enterprise networks, they`ll run smack into a culture that has already enjoyed the interoperability benefits that standards such as Ethernet have created. Having tasted the freedom to pick from different vendors the equipment that best matches their requirements, these new Sonet users won`t want to return to the old days of monolithic solutions when it comes to linking their local area networks. Finally, the 1996 Telecommunications Act will force the regional Bell operating companies to provide equal access to their facilities to their potential competitors, who may not be using the same equipment, efficiently and economically.
The importance of such interoperability was a point of debate among vendors at the show. However, I rather like how one vendor expressed his viewpoint. "From now on," he said, "if you don`t offer interoperability, you will soon be a greasy spot on the side of the road."
Perhaps this states the case too strongly--but if I were a vendor who had chosen to ignore the customer benefits of interoperability, I`d be careful to look both ways before I crossed the street.
Earlier this year, at the ofc show in Dallas, TX, Lightwave assembled a focus group of readers and asked their opinions of various strategies to improve the publication. One of these ideas was a redesign. We showed the group various artist`s sketches in different sizes and formats, and received a variety of opinions and suggestions on our ideas.
While there was little unanimity of opinion on most topics, one participant expressed a strongly held view that led the others in the group to nod in agreement. "Whatever you do," he said, "don`t write an editorial about the redesign. I hate those!"
Next month, we`ll debut the first major redesign of the publication since 1993. Lightwave will enjoy a more contemporary look. The format will be easier to read and will enable us to provide a wider range of information each month.
But I`m not going to say anything about it. Not a word. q