ESCON ENHANCEMENTS TO CIENA’S ONLINE EDGE PLATFORM REDUCE THE COST OF DELIVERING STORAGE EXTENSION SERVICES
CIENA Adds ESCON Multiplexing to ONLINE Edge As Part of LightWorks Services Strategy
Linthicum, MD — 10/27/2003Ciena® Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEN), a leading global provider of innovative network solutions, today announced the integration of ESCON® multiplexing capabilities into its ONLINE Edge™ platform to offer carriers and enterprises a highly scalable and efficient solution for remote ESCON connectivity in storage area networks (SANs). Ciena’s ESCON MUX allows carriers to leverage cost-efficient coarse wavelength division multiplexing (CWDM) and existing SONET/SDH infrastructures to maximize bandwidth efficiency for storage services and to reduce the cost of transporting ESCON traffic over long distances for disaster recovery.
Integrated ESCON multiplexing in the ONLINE Edge platform is the latest development in Ciena’s LightWorks™ Services strategy to help service providers use their existing infrastructure to make current services more profitable and to capitalize on new opportunities in enterprise data services without overlay data networks.
In today’s storage extension market, enterprise ESCON signals typically are carried over individual fibers or over wavelengths within a fiber when WDM technology is deployed. Ciena’s ONLINE Edge solution uses integrated ESCON multiplexing that combines up to 12 unique full-rate ESCON signals onto each of eight optically protected OC-48c/STM-16-framed wavelengths for a total of 96 ESCON channels per fiber. With such market-leading density, Ciena’s ONLINE Edge solution offers unsurpassed bandwidth efficiency while also simplifying management, reducing network complexity and decreasing fiber equipment, power and space requirements.
"Enterprise demand for reliable disaster recovery and business continuance solutions continues to grow. Enterprises require storage extension portfolios from service providers that include the ability to efficiently transport many ESCON channels over long distances," said Daryl Inniss, Optical Component Director of the South San Francisco research firm RHK, Inc. "Ciena's ONLINE Edge, which already supported 1Gb/s and 2Gb/s Fibre Channel, FICON™, and Ethernet, further supports business needs by adding ESCON for remote data center connectivity."
Designed for carrier services and enterprise campuses requiring data center connectivity, Ciena’s ONLINE Edge enables service providers to cost-effectively deliver storage extension as well as voice, video and data services across metro and long-haul networks with carrier-class reliability, eliminating the need for costly, low-speed protocol conversions.
Available as a simple interface card, the ESCON MUX also supports port-level performance metrics (PMs) that enable end-to-end troubleshooting and give service providers the ability to offer customers robust Service Level Agreements (SLAs) on storage services that go beyond simple storage connectivity.
“As service providers look for new ways to generate revenues and maximize the features of their current infrastructure, we continue to see growing interest in our storage extension solutions,” said Francois Locoh-Donou, vice president of marketing at Ciena. “Our new multiplexing capabilities at the network edge offer a more economical solution for carrying ESCON traffic across a reliable multiservice network, allowing carriers to increase the profitability of their SAN service offerings and support a broad storage migration strategy.”
ONLINE Edge employs the field-proven ESCON multiplexing technology of Ciena’s ONLINE Metro™ platform recently used by an established carrier to extend ESCON SRDF™ services over 180Km. ONLINE Edge with integrated ESCON multiplexing is available today and joins Ciena’s growing portfolio of solutions for storage extension services including the CN 2000™ Storage Extension Platform. The CN 2000 is a customer premise device that multiplexes data center protocols directly into SONET/SDH payloads and transports them natively leveraging existing SONET/SDH, DWDM and dark fiber networks. Integrated data compression on all protocols and the transport of multiple applications on a single network connection significantly reduces WAN costs.
Ciena Corporation delivers innovative network solutions to the world's largest service providers, increasing the cost-efficiency of current services while enabling the creation of new carrier-class data services built upon the existing network infrastructure. Additional information about Ciena can be found at www.ciena.com.
This press release contains certain forward-looking statements based on current expectations, forecasts and assumptions of Ciena (the Company) that involve risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements in this release, including but not limited to the features and benefits of Ciena’s products, are based on information available to the Company as of the date hereof. The Company’s actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied in such forward-looking statements, due to risks and uncertainties associated with the Company’s business, which include the risk factors disclosed in the Company’s Report on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on August 21, 2003. Forward looking statements include statements regarding the Company’s expectations, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future and can be identified by forward looking words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “should,” “will,” and “would” or similar words. The Company assumes no obligation to update the information included in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
Nicole Anderson
Ciena Corporation
(877) 857 -7377
pr@ciena.com
Marie Downing
Ciena Corporation
(888) 243-6223
ir@ciena.com
