Ciena Insights is Ciena's official news blog, keeping you informed about Ciena news and happenings, and giving you a forum for engaging in conversations with Ciena. Bo Gowan is the blog moderator, and Ciena's social media manager.
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Last month, Ciena CEO Gary Smith added more frequent flyer miles to his account than I've collected in the last 10 years as he travelled to a variety of destinations across the Asia-Pacific region. After a quick stop along the way in Hawaii for the PTC’12 trade show (see Gary Smith talks submarine networks), Gary made a series of stops to visit employees and customers in APAC.
This included several "All Hands" meetings over lunch in our Mumbai, Gurgaon and Japan offices, as well as two Ciena-hosted receptions with several of our customers. And while these event made for some great pictures (see below) the most interesting part of his whirlwind tour is likely the interview Gary had with local trade publication Light Reading India, one of several interviews he had with media and analysts during the trip. In his Light Reading India interview, Gary talked about a range of topics related to Ciena and our activities in this fast-growing market.
There are largely three things that we have identified for the long-term strategic play. First is clearly to support the Indian domestic market with customized offerings, that is, making a strong presence in the local market, strategically. Second is identifying qualified talent. We always wanted to have our direct presence and capability in India. We are pleased with the productivity in India. [Third] We have three of the major carriers in India as our customers. We do have local partner support here in India but we can't name them.
On challenges in the Indian market:
If you look at the issues, the country is facing a lot of infrastructure challenges such as multiple fiber cuts. Other challenges [include] finding the most economical way to scale the network. A very specific issue in the Indian market is over-supply. While the market opportunity here is certainly big, the existing number of 15 operators is way too many. Hence, consolidation is going to be the key. The market needs to balance it, sooner or later.
Also, much has been said about the declining service quality, but the question comes -- are you as a subscriber ready to pay more for better service quality? So, it’s important for a market to define itself and set priorities.
On markets where Ciena will compete
In terms of markets, we believe that the Middle East, Russia, Brazil and India are amongst the fastest growing countries. We witnessed a growth of over 10 percent last year, which we believe is a great thing.
As the market for Business Ethernet Services continues to grow worldwide, with both more demand from enterprises and more providers offering Ethernet services, it's no longer good enough to just "be in the game" and expect customers to come knocking.
In order to win, today's Ethernet service providers have a key quality in mind: differentiation.
Service providers must provide an offering to their enterprise customers that provides clear differentiation from other offerings, be it faster time to service, more stringent SLAs, or a more flexible and dynamic service. Without this differentiation, the service provider offering risks being lost in the crowd of basic Ethernet connectivity offerings.
This new reality is evident in two new Business Ethernet Services customers announced today by Ciena. Canadian service provider Fibrenoire and e|net in Ireland are both deploying Ciena's Carrier Ethernet Solutions (CES) portfolio with service differentiation in mind.
For Fibrenoire, which operates an IP MPLS network covering Québec and Ontario with more than 3,000 km of optical fiber, that means deploying Ciena's 3960 and 3920 Service Delivery Switches to enable Ethernet Virtual Private Line (EVPL), Ethernet Private Line (EPL) and Business Internet services that can be closely monitored and finely tuned to specific customer needs.
"In the highly-competitive business services market in Quebec and Ontario, it is essential that we differentiate our solutions from those offered by other network providers – we saw an opportunity to do that by delivering better quality service for a superior customer experience. With Ciena’s proven Carrier Ethernet Solutions, we are able to monitor our network, and make adjustments rapidly and efficiently, to support our market-leading Business Services service level agreement," said Jean-Francois Lévesque, chief technology officer at Fibrenoire in today's press release.
For e|net, differentiation is created by adding Ciena's 3916 and 3930 Service Delivery Switches to an infrastructure that already features an array of other Ciena CES devices connecting 94 towns and cities across Ireland. Combined, the network can provide enterprise customers with sophisticated QoS and SLA capabilities along with a "low-touch" management and provisioning system that enables rapid and low-cost lighting of new services.
"Carriers rely on e|net for quick and reliable access to connectivity and Ciena’s Carrier Ethernet Solutions offer us the portfolio needed to effectively build and expand our Carrier Ethernet network. That means e|net can quickly light new connections for customers, providing them with the guaranteed service quality they require," said Conal Henry, chief executive officer at e|net in today's press release.
By the way, if you haven't read about the branding change we recently made going from Carrier Ethernet Service Delivery (CESD) to Carrier Ethernet Solutions (CES) you can read about it here (see What's in a name? CESD becomes CES).
We even crowned a favorite picture of 2011 thanks to over 100 votes submitted on our Facebook page. The winner...London Tower (see below).
2.) Submarine networking had a big news month, mainly driven by the annual PTC'12 event hosted in Hawaii. Ciena was a big participant in the event, and we covered the show activities via our social channels. That included a video of Gary Smith talking submarine, some pictures from the event, posting our Submarine Cable Networks overview deck on Slideshare, and going live with a few new Submarine videos on our YouTube page.
But the big Ciena news from PTC'12 was the announcement from existing Ciena 40G submarine customer Southern Cross on plans to deploy Ciena 100G technology on its submarine network by the end of 2011 (see Southern Cross to deploy Ciena 100G for Pacific Submarine Network).
Ciena wasn't the only one making news around the show. Other news highlights included a new submarine network connecting Bermuda, Telefónica International Wholesale Services adding new routes between the U.S. and Europe, and even a new submarine cable connecting Iraq.
3.) Our 100G customer list grew again with the addition of Lightower and PCCW Global (another piece of Ciena submarine news for the month). You can see both of their network diagrams in this blog post highlighting the two deployments. We also posted a new 100G Infographic: the connected global village, which provided examples of how bandwidth is being consumed around the world and how coherent 100G can help.
4.) We eliminated our CESD portfolio. OK not really. We're still in the Carrier Ethernet business, but we did kill off the Carrier Ethernet Service Delivery (CESD) brand name -- simplifying it to the more straight-forward name of Carrier Ethernet Solutions (CES). You can see the portfolio home page here, and you'll see the new CES branding reflected in all new press releases and product references. You may still see the CESD name on older collateral and blog posts, but going forward we'll use the CES name.
5.) We launched a new ciena.com home page and several new regional sites. You can read an overview of the new ciena.com page here, which highlights the broad array of new videos at your disposal, and learn about the new Italian and Polish-language versions of the site here. Of course, you could also just go to www.ciena.com to check it out for yourself.
If you haven't stopped by the Ciena home page recently you'll see something new, as we've rolled out a redesign of our ciena.com home page.
The beautifule new main image area now scrolls through four customer case studies that span four separate market segments. Below that is an improved "What's New" section that thankfully still includes our blog preview box (but you already know how to find us anyway).
But the change that is really worth highlighting is "below the fold" of the page, as scrolling down reveals a host of new videos that are categorized into three new sections - Why Ciena, Our Solutions, and Our Technologies.
Ciena has been integrating more and more video into our website over the last year, and this latest update pushes that to the next level. In fact, there are 29 feature videos that you can now access straight from the ciena.com home page -- and many of them are brand new.
A few months ago on the Ciena Facebook page we asked our followers the question "Who is Ciena?" -- asking people to try to explain Ciena in a way a complete non-techie would understand.
It was a fun way to get some interaction on our Facebook page, and we ended up getting some great responses.
Of course, we already know who Ciena is. In fact, every three months or so we update a corporate overview presentation that answers that very question -- and I've just posted the latest version of that presentation deck on our ever-growing Ciena Slideshare page.
You can see the preso embedded below, or click here to view and download directly from Slideshare.
Much of the focus in our industry centers around connecting people and access to information, many times across great distances. An excellent example of this is last week's PTC'12 conference in Hawaii.
Ciena was a Platinum Sponsor of the event, in which we focused a great deal on solutions to add capacity and intelligence to today's submarine cable networks. And while it was on all accounts an excellent event, a week-long business trip to Hawaii isn't likely something many of us can get approved by our bosses (no matter how much we plead our case.)
Increasingly, though, those of us not able to attend these industry events are finding that we can feel like we're almost right there listening to they keynote session.
That's exactly what you can do with PTC'12, as PTC has uploaded videos of the conference to its Vimeo channel, allowing you to watch the opening remarks and many keynote sessions. This adds to the blog posts, tweets, and pictures posted by us and others in the industry from last week, giving an even more complete view of the conference to people around the world.
One person who was able to attend the event was Ciena CEO Gary Smith, who made a stop at the show as part of a larger series of stop with customers and employees across the Asia-Pacific region. In the interview, John Krzywicki of Analysys Mason asks Gary about Ciena's recent efforts in the submarine networking market and the needs that network operators are highlighting as they upgrade their subsea networks.
Much of the focus in our industry centers around connecting people and access to information, many times across great distances. An excellent example of this is last week's PTC'12 conference in Hawaii.
Ciena was a Platinum Sponsor of the event, in which we focused a great deal on solutions to add capacity and intelligence to today's submarine cable networks. And while it was on all accounts an excellent event, a week-long business trip to Hawaii isn't likely something many of us can get approved by our bosses (no matter how much we plead our case.)
Increasingly, though, those of us not able to attend these industry events are finding that we can feel like we're almost right there listening to they keynote session.
That's exactly what you can do with PTC'12, as PTC has uploaded videos of the conference to its Vimeo channel, allowing you to watch the opening remarks and many keynote sessions. This adds to the blog posts, tweets, and pictures posted by us and others in the industry from last week, giving an even more complete view of the conference to people around the world.
One person who was able to attend the event was Ciena CEO Gary Smith, who made a stop at the show as part of a larged series of stop with customers and employees across the Asia-Pacific region. In the interview, John Krzywicki of Analysys Mason asks Gary about Ciena's recent efforts in the submarine networking market, the needs that network operators are highlighting as they upgrade their subsea networks.
Anthony McLachlan, Ciena's general manager and vice president of APAC, recently did a video interview with the Rust Report, an Australian pub focused on the regional tech and ICT news.
Anthony covered topics that ranged from Ciena's local Australian customers and operations to the range of solutions that Ciena has to offer to the Australian market.
Benvenuti a Ciena, or "Welcome to Ciena" for those of you (like me) who don't know Italian.
Why the Italian welcome? Today, Ciena has introduced a new Italian-language version of ciena.com. You can see it at www.ciena.it.
I should also say "witamy w firmie Ciena" as we have also gone live with a Polish version as well at www.ciena.pl.
The two new sites are the latest in an ongoing effort by our web team to develop a variety of non-English versions of our corporate website. The Italian and Polish sites join Portuguese and Korean-langueage versions added last year, as well as a variety of others. To see them all, just click on the "Ciena Worldwide" button on the top right of our home page.
This week featured one of the big submarine networking industry events as the Pacific Telecommunications Council hosted the PTC'12 in Hawaii, the 34th annual conference for the Asia-Pacific region and the rest of the global telecoms industry.
The event made for quite a bit of news and updates related to subsea cable deployments and upgrades. Yesterday we highlighted the big news with Southern Cross' planned 100G upgrade, but there were other news highlights on submarine networks connecting Bermuda, Telefónica International Wholesale Services adding new routes between the U.S. and Europe, and even a new submarine cable connecting Iraq.
Below are a few pictures from the event, click through to go to the full album of pics on the Ciena Facebook page. Also below is a slide deck I have just uploaded to the Ciena Slideshare page, that gives a good overview of the Submarine Cable industry and Ciena's submarine networking solutions.
Much of the submarine networking industry is gathered in Hawaii this week for PTC’12, an annual conference hosted by the Pacific Telecommunications Council. The event has a large focus on network solutions and technologies that can help submarine network operators span the huge distances required for trans-Pacific communications.
One of the big pieces of news coming out of the event this week is from Southern Cross, which owns and operates a network that includes 28,500 kilometers of subsea fiber stretching from Australia and New Zealand all the way to the U.S. west coast. In an update timed to align with PTC’12, Southern Cross yesterday announced plans to deploy Ciena’s 100G submarine solution by December of this year.
“The implementation of 100 Gigabit equipment this year is some two years sooner than previously anticipated and it demonstrates how the potential size of our network grows in huge leaps,” said Ross Pfeffer, Southern Cross Sales and Marketing Director, in today’s Southern Cross announcement. “Some have said there won’t be enough capacity for hi-speed internet growth, but as our expansions and the ongoing rapid advances in technology show, that couldn’t be further from the truth”.
As you may remember, it was just a few months ago that Ciena and Southern Cross announced plans to upgrade the submarine cable operator’s network from 10G to 40G across this same network (see Southern Cross takes 40G across 8,000km link with Ciena). That network expansion, as well as the second stage upgrade to 100G, leverages the WaveLogic coherent capabilities of Ciena's 6500 Packet Optical Platform and OTN switching from our 5400 Family.
“This move to 40 Gbps from our existing 10 Gbps platform will be short lived. The rapid pace of technological improvement will allow Southern Cross to implement Ciena's 100 Gbps transmission equipment with a simple line card upgrade by December this year when the second phase of the current upgrade is due to be completed. The upgrade simplicity gives us a rapid time-to-capacity advantage,” said Southern Cross in yesterday’s update.
In addition to the company’s 100G plans, this week’s update provided a glimpse to the initial results of its 40G migration, as Southern Cross announced the immediate availability of the first 200 Gigabits of capacity from its latest upgrade and a price reduction of up to 44%.
“Once again we have taken advantage of the very latest developments, to rapidly expand our supply well ahead of demand and to reduce our prices,” said Pfeffer.
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Last month, Ciena CEO Gary Smith added more frequent flyer miles to his account than I've collected in the last 10 years as he travelled to a variety of destinations across the Asia-Pacific region. After a quick stop along the way in Hawaii for the PTC’12 trade show (see 
For e|net, differentiation is created by adding Ciena's 
A few months ago on the Ciena Facebook page we asked our followers the question "Who is Ciena?" -- asking people to try to explain Ciena in a way a complete non-techie would understand.
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