view printer-friendly version

CIENA ADDS OPTICAL PRIORITY PROVISIONING TO ITS LIGHTWORKS TOOLKIT

Takes the Lead in Further Advancing Point-and-Click Provisioning; Plans To Conduct First Demo of Any-Priority, Real-Time Optical Service Provisioning at OFC

Ciena Corporation (CIEN) today introduced Optical Priority Provisioning™ as the latest technology enabler added to the company's LightWorks Toolkit™ for New Optical Services. Ciena also announced the first demonstration of any-priority, end-to-end, real-time service provisioning to take place March 7-9 in Ciena's booth (#2813) at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC) in Baltimore.

"As carriers continue to build intelligent networks capable of true on-demand bandwidth, Ciena is raising the bar on the notion of 'point-and-click' provisioning by giving carriers the capability to instantly define priority levels for the customization of service per circuit, per route or per user," said Gary Smith, Ciena's chief operating officer. "Dynamic provisioning is important, but it doesn't go far enough. With Optical Priority Provisioning and other enablers from Ciena's LightWorks Toolkit, carriers will be able broaden their portfolios by prioritizing the optical services they sell to their customers."

Optical Priority Provisioning allows carriers not only to turn up optical services in real time, but additionally to specify priority levels for further differentiation of optical services. For instance, a carrier may elect to offer multiple levels of optical bandwidth, ranging from "premium" to "best-effort" service. Each level of service can be priced and delivered differently, allowing carriers much more flexibility and differentiation. The tool helps carriers more easily meet service level agreements by assigning and adjusting priorities in real time, potentially allowing carriers to unlock more revenue from data services.

Optical Priority Provisioning simplifies the delivery of differentiated optical services by providing access to service templates of predefined restoration priorities, preemptability, and linear, ring and mesh protection schemes. Using these simplified templates, service provisioners can immediately deliver optical services, at any service level, in just a few clicks of a mouse. Ciena's Optical Priority Provisioning tool is expected to be available for the MultiWave CoreDirector™ in the second quarter of calendar 2000.

"We believe Ciena's LightWorks Toolkit approach to enabling dynamic new optical services is right on the mark, and their Optical Priority Provisioning tool is a tremendous way to simplify the provisioning process, provide more customized service, and meet SLAs," said Chris Nicoll, director of carrier and optical infrastructure analysis at Current Analysis. "For some services, carriers will want to use fully detailed and interactive interfaces to manage traffic engineering very closely and still turn up service in minutes. Other services, like straight-through wavelength transport, can utilize a simpler tool to turn up service even faster. Either way, Ciena provides strategic solutions for quickly prioritizing and provisioning a variety of optical services across the network."

"Today, service providers are facing a growing inventory of bandwidth to provision and manage across their networks, and they're challenged with continually increasing demands," Smith said. "The ability to quickly turn up differentiable, prioritized services unlocks the optical network's potential to improve the economics of network operations."

Ciena recently unveiled its LightWorks Toolkit for any-time, any-size, any-priority optical services. The Toolkit provides a suite of silicon-, optics- and software-based technologies that help carriers design and deliver dynamic new services. Other tools in the LightWorks Toolkit include Wavelength Binding™, Flexible Concatenation™, VSR Optics and Transparent Service Multiplexing™. By combining these tools to build new services, carriers will be able to manage automatic bandwidth bursting, dynamically prioritize services based on service level agreements, provision end-to-end network routes, and much more.