Ciena DCI Platform Adds Capacity, Space to Datacenters
Ciena is introducing a new datacenter interconnect (DCI) platform that allows cloud, Internet content providers and data center providers to quickly scale bandwidth and support high-speed data transfer, virtual machine migration and disaster recovery/backup between data centers. With a compact design that helps reduce real estate costs, Ciena’s new Waveserver stackable interconnect platform also provides 60 percent more capacity per rack unit and nearly 20 terabits per fiber versus competing available platforms, to support surging bandwidth demands of web-scale data centers.
Overall global DCI revenue in 2014 grew more than 16 percent, reaching $2.5 billion, according to Ovum. Nearly one-half of all DCI spending in 2014 was from communications service providers (CSPs), while the Internet content provider (ICP) segment grew 64 percent year over year.Ovum expects overall global revenue to hit $4.2 billion by 2019.
“Data traffic volumes between metro data centers is skyrocketing and generating significant volume for high-capacity DCI. Vendors are responding to this emerging opportunity with a new class of equipment specifically designed and optimized for web-scale operators. Traditional optical platforms were designed for telco environments not data center environments making scale difficult. Ciena’s Waveserver stackable DCI platform is specifically designed for delivery of high-capacity DCI in a manner that is consistent with how ICP’s currently build and operate their networks," said Ron Kline, principal analyst, Intelligent Networks at Ovum.
The new platform is powered by Ciena’s WaveLogic technology and built with open software principles to enable automation and simplify management. Additionally, with Ciena’s new Emulation Cloud, an open, rapid prototyping environment, network providers, data center operators and developers can test and refine applications before they are added to the network.
Purpose built for web-scale metro DCI applications, Waveserver is a highly-compact, stackable interconnect system that provides a reliable, high-capacity link to interconnect multiple datacenters within a metro area. With Ciena’s OPn architecture approach and a set of open APIs, network providers can program Waveserver manually or remotely to quickly establish a connection via any smart device. Waveserver acts as a bandwidth server to provide server like deployment and provisioning. Waveserver provides significantly lower cost per transported bit, lower cost per bit per rack, and lower power consumption versus available competing products. It provides a total of 800G of input and output made up of 400G Ethernet clients plus 400G of line capacity in just one rack unit. It also frees network owners from having to upgrade their hardware as they increase their client rates by supporting an arbitrary mix of 10, 40, and 100GbE clients.
Emulation Cloud is a new, open application development environment designed to allow datacenter operators, application developers, and other third-party developers to create, test, and fine-tune customized web-scale applications tailored to their specific needs. Hosted in the cloud, Ciena’s Emulation Cloud helps accelerate DevOps and ease the integration with IT systems.
