Blackboard interconnects data centers with Infinera Cloud Xpress

Education technology company Blackboard is using the Cloud Xpress platform from Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN) in a data center interconnectivity application.

Blackboard offers education services to a wide variety of customers, from students to universities and other organizations worldwide. The current application of the Cloud Xpress will see Blackboard use the system to interconnect three data centers in the U.S. Further details of the data centers' locations were not revealed. The company will leverage Infinera's Instant Bandwidth capability to provision services among the three data centers.

"As we introduce higher quality video, audio, and other new technology to offer the most comprehensive teaching and learning solutions for our customers, we needed to progressively scale our network to support the dramatic growth in data," said Peter George, senior vice president of product development at Blackboard. "We selected the Infinera Cloud Xpress for this metro cloud because of its ability to grow capacity quickly, incrementally, and without any significant overhaul in our network. With Cloud Xpress and Instant Bandwidth we can expand capacity very rapidly as we need it. No other vendor provided this capability."

Infinera introduced the Cloud Xpress platform last fall (see "Infinera tackles metro on two fronts" and "Infinera ships Cloud Xpress platform"). It is designed for data center interconnect applications requiring high density, high capacity, and low power, as well as the ability to operate within a software-defined networking (SDN) environment.

For more information on high-speed transmission systems and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyer's Guide.