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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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.
You may notice a subtle change on Ciena’s website and in future press releases related to Carrier Ethernet. Our Carrier Ethernet Service Delivery (CESD) portfolio has been renamed to Carrier Ethernet Solutions (CES). You can see the new solutions home page here.
We may have made a small branding change, but that doesn’t mean a change in Ciena’s status as a leading provider of Carrier Ethernet gear, with notable recent deployments with Vaioni, Comcast, and AAPT.
Indeed, Carrier Ethernet is gaining momentum on multiple fronts, including the growth of Ethernet business service offerings, as an enabler of Cloud infrastructure, and as a platform for 3G/4G mobile backhaul.
You’ll still likely be able to find references to the old CESD name on old blog posts and in some of our collateral as it gradually goes through the update process, but all our new material (and all of your new material for any of our wonderful BizConnect partners out there) will adopt the new branding.
For our final look back at last year, we highlight the best videos of 2011. We had some great videos added to the Ciena YouTube channel in 2011, and generated almost 27,000 views for the year -- more than three times our total for 2010. But there were also excellent videos created by other sites that we include below.
Most watched Ciena video: What is coherent optical networking?
The video from 2011 that garnered the most views on our YouTube channel was of Ciena's Rick Dodd giving a 101 on coherent optical networking. Coherent was a hot topic in the optical industry during 2011, as the industry got firmly behind the technology as a way to enable optical transport speeds of 100G and beyond.
Best Mobile Innovation Lab video: The Making of Ciena's EMEA Innovation Lab Truck
We take a lot of pictures and video of our two Innovation Labs (one in N.A. and one in EMEA). The best video from 2011 was unveiled right after we rolled out our brand new EMEA Innovation Lab to the world in advance of Mobile World Congress 2011. We had the cameras go behind the scenes to detail how we went from a normal 18-wheel big rig to a decked out lab on wheels.
Best "from the show floor" video: Ciena and Corning demo at OFC/NFOEC 2011
We love to take video straight from the trade show floor, giving those who can't attend a virtual look at what's going on. The best of 2011 was from the show floor at OFC/NFOEC 2011, where we partnered with Corning to show a live demo of 100G transport across a 250km span using absolutely no in-line amplifiers. The demo ran from the Corning booth to the Ciena Innovation Lab also located on the show floor.
Best demo video: High Energy Physics Data at 100 Gb/s
This video was created by the folks over that the University of Victoria, who were part of an advanced 100G demo at SC11. They created this slick animated video outlining the demo, which included participation from Ciena, Caltech, CANARIE, and BCnet.
Best customer testimonial: Internet2's 8.8Tbps Network Using Ciena Gear
It's always great when a customer is so happy that they are willing to talk on the record about their relationship with you. It's even better when that customer is literally building out the first coast-to-coast 100G network across the U.S. That customer is Internet2, and its Executive Director of Network Services, Rob Vietzke, talked about the massive network project that was announced in 2011.
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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.
You may notice a subtle change on Ciena’s website and in future press releases related to Carrier Ethernet. Our Carrier Ethernet Service Delivery (CESD) portfolio has been renamed to Carrier Ethernet Solutions (CES). You can see the 
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