Have you got the skills and resources you need to modernise?

Even though there’s a lot to gain from modernising networks ASAP, there are also some pretty significant barriers that might be holding you back as well. First, there’s the fact that delivering transformation isn’t easy and requires specialist skills you may not have in house. Also, most of the operators I talk to aren’t ‘sized for transformation’, which basically means that their internal resources are already stretched with day-to-day operations tasks such as customer onboarding and service design and deployment.

With these kinds of challenges and constraints to deal with, you’ll most likely need support from a trusted network partner to help you modernise your environment. The only question is, who should you trust to deliver a project that is basically like open-heart surgery on your network?

Well, someone like us.

There are lots of reasons why we’re a great choice for any operator looking to modernise and optimise their network. First, we’ve been delivering large-scale network modernisation projects for decades, which is priceless. Second, we’ve developed a tried-and-tested, programmatic approach and a suite of automated migration tools that take you from your current infrastructure to your modern network end state quickly, and with minimal risks to your business.

Laying the right foundations with Consulting, Discovery and Planning

We lay the foundations for your modernisation project with the first three phases of our approach, which are Initiation, Discovery, and Planning. We prepare your environment for migration by transforming all your data into a universal scheme, visualising your legacy network assets and traffic flows, and figuring out which groups of circuits can be migrated together.

Delivering a low-risk migration to your modernised network

In phases four and five of the modernisation journey – Execution and Closure – we conduct pre-migration testing to ensure that the target architecture is ready to support your circuits and traffic. We then use automated scripts to ensure fast, error-free migration to your new environment, and we conduct post-migration testing to ensure everything’s working right.

At the end of the process, we co-ordinate any required decommissioning work for your legacy network environment. We also train your operations teams to manage the new environment, and hand over control to your people based on a pre-agreed schedule.

Your modernisation end state: Ciena’s Adaptive Network

While our programmatic, end-to-end modernisation approach ensures you can modernise your network with no business risks, Ciena’s Adaptive Network technologies give you the scalability and manageability you need to meet customers’ needs now and in the future.

Here’s what you get with Ciena’s Adaptive Network:

• Programmable infrastructure - highly instrumented packet and optical infrastructure that securely manages a dynamic pool of virtual and physical resources that can scale on demand to meet your future traffic demands, with no need for truck rolls or costly on-site management. Our programmable infrastructure also generates telemetry data that can help you improve capacity planning and troubleshooting, and ensure compliance with customer SLAs for service quality and availability.

• Blue Planet Intelligent Automation software - which supports the orchestration of multi-vendor and multi-domain network infrastructures. This allows you to automate critical processes such as bandwidth provisioning at the optical and IP layers. You can also automate provisioning of services that touch multiple network layers and equipment in a ‘zero-touch’ way, which can reduce provisioning of Ethernet and other services from weeks to hours.

• Blue Planet Inventory, Route Optimisation and Assurance (ROA) and Analytics – tools that provide a deep view of your network operations, from auto-discovery of your network assets to analysis of traffic flows across the network and pre-emptive detection of bottlenecks and other issues that could eventually impact service quality. By implementing these technologies, you can take an important step towards the self-aware, self-governing, self-healing networks of the future.

Take the next step on your network modernisation journey with Ciena

At Ciena, we’ve perfected the art of delivering modernised, high-performing networks with industry leading programmable infrastructure, smart network software, and end-to-end migration support. In one recent example, we are helping a major North American carrier deliver a successful 3,500-node legacy network migration to a modern, Adaptive Network in less than 2 years.

Across a range of other projects, we’ve been able to accelerate operators’ modernisation projects by up to 150% compared to traditional in-house approaches, typically with a 40% improvement in migration efficiency year-on-year.

So if you want to achieve these benefits in your own business, while avoiding the potential risks and pitfalls of taking on a major modernisation project in-house, please visit //www.ciena.com/legacy-networks/.