With 2015 just a few paces behind us in the rear-view mirror, it’s a good time to take a peek back and see all the good things the last year has brought us in technology news. Network specialist Ciena had a banner year in terms of newsworthy headlines; with 66 press releases and 104 blog posts, there was a lot to say over the last 365 days of 2015.
According to the company’s 2015 blog recap, we saw the release of its optical chipsets, the WaveLogic 3 Extreme and WaveLogic 3 Nano. The company also unveiled its Wavesaver, which helps bandwidth connectivity in the data center. Of course, it shouldn’t go without saying that Ciena acquired Cyan, a move that helped transform web-scale networking as we know it. With the acquisition, Ciena created the Blue Planet division, which includes Ciena’s former Agility business. The main focus of this division is providing automation to customers, thus offering a competitive advantage in terms of revenue streams, and lower costs with hardware operations.
The latter helped catapult a new service orchestration platform for SDN/NFV.
“What Blue Planet now adds is a set of innovative building blocks that bring SDN, NFV and service orchestration into a unified, open platform. This platform both reduces vendor lock-in and simplifies the creation, automation, and orchestration of services for network operators across their end-to-end network. It’s a new way to look at network virtualization,” according to the company’s press release.
The technologies behind this platform warranted a tech-driven Google (News - Alert) Hangout to speak about the many details surrounding the announcement.
According to Gartner, by 2017 web-scale IT will be an architectural approach operating in 50 percent of global enterprises, and given Ciena’s banner year, the company is doing its part.
"Web-scale IT looks to change the IT value chain in a systemic fashion," said Cameron Haight, research vice president at Gartner (News - Alert) in a release on its findings from a former report. "Data centers are designed with an industrial engineering perspective that looks for every opportunity to reduce cost and waste.”
Web-scale networking allows providers to deliver applications with greater agility, automation and simplicity, while reducing the cost of operating the networks that support them. Ciena is at the forefront of these innovations.
2016 will no doubt be as good – if not, better – than 2015. Ciena is a company to keep on your notification radar.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson