Ciena expands Carrier Ethernet Services Delivery Portfolio

OCTOBER 7, 2008 â�� Ciena Corp. (search for Ciena) has announced new Carrier Ethernet service delivery switches and other enhancements to its Carrier Ethernet Service Delivery Portfolio. The new additions are designed to enhance the portfolio's ability to combine low-touch devices and intelligent software to simplify and scale Carrier Ethernet service delivery by automating and accelerating service creation and activation in access and metro networks.

According to Ovum-RHK, the global Carrier Ethernet business services market is expected to reach $31 billion by 2012, fueled by demand for high-capacity Layer 2 virtual private networks, video, business continuity and disaster recovery, cloud computing, and other diverse applications. To succeed in these markets, as well as to enable metro transport services for mobile backhaul and wholesale applications, Ciena says that Ethernet services need to overcome the issues associated with legacy business and transport services, including the inability to scale bandwidth as customers' needs change, the high cost-per-bit of traffic, and the significant amount of time it takes between a customer placing an order and the service provider turning up their service.

Ciena says its Carrier Ethernet Service Delivery Portfolio addresses these issues by delivering a range of programmable, carrier-class devices that use a common service-aware operating system and unified Ethernet services management software. The resulting service-driven network can provide a diverse Carrier Ethernet service mix to multiple customers from a range of locations -- indoor, outdoor, environmentally controlled or not -- and reduce installation time by up to 75 percent through automated service creation, provisioning, and activation, according to the company.

"To continue growing their Ethernet services business, service providers need to expand the addressable market by taking the time, cost, and complexity out of service delivery by turning it into an almost 'plug and play' experience," said Stan Hubbard, senior analyst at Heavy Reading. "Ciena's Carrier Ethernet portfolio addresses this challenge throughout the full service lifecycle -- intelligently automating service creation, activation, management, and upgrades to deliver Ethernet business and transport services at a lower cost per bit with low-touch operations and the flexibility to adapt to dynamic customer requirements in the future."

The additions to the portfolio include:

Environmentally hardened and suitable for mounting outdoors or indoors, the new CN 3911 Service Delivery Switch is designed to offer flexible deployment options to support a wide range of mobile backhaul and business services applications and provide significant cost savings in terms of real estate, site conditioning, and power consumption. It accommodates two Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) network ports, eight 10/100/1000 user ports, as well as optional system components, including a physically secure module for customer access to user ports and a voice module with two FXS ports with POTS-VoIP gateway functionality.
Positioned as a cost-effective business service delivery switch with advanced features, the new CN 3920 Service Delivery Switch includes a high-capacity switching fabric with all GbE ports -- four 100/1000-Mbit/sec optical and eight 10/100/1000-Mbit/sec copper -- in a single-rack-unit ETSI form factor that provides front access to power and all network and management interfaces.
Ciena's service-aware operating system serves as the common software intelligence shared across all Ciena Service Delivery Switches and Service Aggregation Switches for consistent system and service attributes. This latest version has been upgraded with new Ethernet control and management plane protocols, Ethernet encapsulation techniques, and Carrier Ethernet operations, administration, and maintenance mechanisms, all of which enhance its fault and performance management, virtual switching, SLA verification, and quality of service capabilities.

"Our leadership in intelligent software and optical control plane technology has given us expertise in how to leverage network automation to take cost out of the network, improve reliability and accelerate service delivery -- and we are bringing that same leadership to Ethernet business and transport services with our advanced Ethernet switching, control plane and management technology," said Steve Alexander, chief technology officer at Ciena. "Our intelligent, software-driven automation minimizes the complexity and challenges of new Carrier Ethernet service delivery resulting in faster rollouts, fewer mistakes, and less service downtime, which lowers overall costs and empowers service providers to be truly agile in responding to customers' initial and on-going service needs."

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