Wave2Wave Solution has extended its ROME robotic cross-connect family with a pair of large-scale offerings. The ROME MAX and ROME MAX-T (with “T” meaning “tall”) robotic cross-connects support large port counts within a standard 19-inch footprint for use in large data centers and similar facilities.
As with the previous members of the ROME line (see, for example, "Wave2Wave offers ROME optical platforms for data center automation" and "Wave2Wave expands portfolio with ROME 250 robotic optical switch for data center"), the ROME MAX and ROME MAX-T offer Layer-0 automation using a plug-and-play approach. The former is a 7-foot tall rack, with the taller ROME MAX-T adding additional capacity in an 8-foot configuration. The ROME MAX will support 1600 fibers and the ROME MAX-T 2000 fibers. The racks are particularly useful in Clos architectures, says the company.
In a conversation with Lightwave, David Wang, founder and CEO of Wave2Wave, says the height of the racks play into a growing trend among major data center operators to design automated facilities that require little or no human intervention – and therefore obviate the need and the cost of human-driven HVAC and other human-centric amenities. Such facility designs put less constraints on system height, Wang points out. The ROME robotic cross-connects feature standard APIs for network management software integration, which enables the systems to operate in the software-defined network (SDN) environments such a facility design philosophy would require.
The ROME MAX and ROME MAX-T should be available by the end of this quarter.
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