With the Ethernet market attaining some level of maturity, speed of delivery and performance guarantees are being considered two of the most important service attributes for any provider to meet customer needs. In an effort to enable network operators and carrier managed service providers to improve end customer experience for Ethernet services, Ciena Corporation added new software capabilities to its packet networking portfolio.

Two of the most important products---Service-Aware (News - Alert) Operating System (SAOS) and OneControl Unified Management System, received enhancements. The move is intended to support the delivery of services tailored to the specific requirements of each carrier customer and support higher, verifiable SLAs. The enhancement will also enable Sovernet to deliver a full range of Ethernet services throughout Northern New England.

It will be relevant to mention here that recently, Sovernet Fiber Corp selected Ciena’s packet networking and Packet-Optical Transport technology to be deployed in the company’s fiber network. Ciena’s products are expected to help the company to introduce new broadband data and voice services in the future.

The new capabilities are designed to reduce installation and provisioning time by as much as 75 percent, enable rapid service changes, and provide end customers with immediate assurance of service performance, Ciena said in a statement.

The new software capabilities align with OPn that supports the building of open, programmable next-generation networks, for quickly delivering new services and bandwidth.

“Metro access and aggregation networks continue to be built out at a furious pace to accommodate the increasing amount of bandwidth required by mobile backhaul, business services, and cloud applications. Whether this infrastructure is built out using IP/MPLS or Ethernet is an open question. Operators are looking for the lowest TCO, which includes the greatest ease of operation and fastest speed of deployment. Ciena's approach to automation and rapid turn-up of services certainly focuses on what providers are looking for to help enable them to gain footprint and competitive advantage,” co-founder and principal analyst of Carrier Networks at Infonetics Research Michael Howard (News - Alert) commented in a statement.

The new software capabilities align with OPn, Ciena's approach for building open, programmable next-generation networks that scale and automatically adapt to quickly deliver new services and bandwidth.

In addition, Ciena introduced new cloud-based portal to allow providers to validate end-to-end Service Level Agreements (SLA) compliance throughout the service lifecycle. For the end customers, the portal provides real-time visibility and service monitoring of their network. The portal provides direct access to SLA reports so customers can self-diagnose Ethernet service health and verify SLA adherence to provide performance assurance, end-user satisfaction and retention. It provides rapid and simple set-up because it is a fully managed SaaS (News - Alert)-based service with no need for hardware, software or additional IT expenditures.

Used by more than 150 carriers, wireless service providers and cable operators worldwide, Ciena's purpose-built packet networking solutions offer a robust set of OAM capabilities. The enhanced packet portfolio is complemented by the company's Network Transformation Solutions Group (NTS (News - Alert)) and BizConnect partner program that offer a truly consultative approach to Ciena partners along with joint marketing and sales support.