17 July 2003 Linthicum, MD Lightwave -- CIENA Corp. has announced the availability of LightWorks ON-Designer, a comprehensive suite of advanced Java-based design tools that automate planning, design, simulation, validation, and turn-up of end-to-end networks. This will result in improved time-to-revenue for new services and enhanced operational cost savings for service providers, say company representatives.
ON-Designer features an open architecture for interacting with existing operations support systems (OSSs) and other modeling instruments. It contains built-in engineering rules for products across CIENA's portfolio, enabling efficient and cost-effective network design, validation, and deployment.
"Automation and integration are two important processes to fixing the current network model, particularly related to bringing new services online faster and with greater overall efficiency," contends Brian VanSteen, principal at PointEast Research. "CIENA has already established itself as a leader in software for automating and managing intelligent networks, and now ON-Designer furthers CIENA's value proposition by taking automated, integrated network planning and design to a higher level."
In today's environment, networks are generally planned and designed in a lengthy process that includes manual gathering of network information and numerous calculations and analyses of the data. The error-prone process can take weeks, or even months, to design, validate, and turn-up networks--which delays time-to-revenue, lengthens customer wait times for new services, and keeps operational costs high, says the company. ON-Designer's Automation Engine and import/export capabilities automatically turn validated network designs into live networks in seconds. ON-Designer, which can run on nearly any desktop or laptop computer, also includes a database for archived network information that can be shared between network planning, engineering, ordering, and other internal organizations.
ON-Designer is the latest development in CIENA's LightWorks Services strategy to help service providers use their existing infrastructure to make current services more profitable and to capitalize on new opportunities in enterprise data services without overlay data networks.
ON-Designer simplifies the complexities of designing end-to-end networks. A simple graphical user interface (GUI) enables quick inputs for service requirements and network constraints so ON-Designer can optimize designs based on unique needs. The system then validates the network through full physical simulations. Validated designs can be automatically turned-up by ON-Designer to reduce deployment and provisioning times while ensuring that networks are built exactly as designed.