Neoscalers excel at delivering massive GPU clusters and LLM platforms to tackle the toughest AI compute challenges. But what about the networks that connect them to customers? Ciena’s Greg Friesen explains how collaborating with an infrastructure expert can help you maximize market velocity and ensure your compute infrastructure and services scale without bottlenecks.
Something we know from working with neoscalers: the sheer scale and complexity of building a global AI network fabric requires unsurpassed optical network speeds, ultra-low latency, and zero-trust resilience. My colleague, Brodie Gage, explored these and other infrastructure concerns in a related blog, here.
In that blog, Brodie discussed three consistent and interrelated challenges you face: scaling capacity efficiently; simplifying complexity; and accelerating time-to-market. For each of these, Ciena Services complements the power of our optical portfolio with people, processes, and tools to make sure you fully realize your vision and satisfy stakeholders, through the entire lifecycle of your network, freeing you to focus on what you do best.
Let’s take a closer look.
Scaling capacity efficiently with services
One thing is clear: You need capacity, and you need it now. To find it, most neoscalers start out leasing waves, adding more as needed. While initially straightforward, the economic and operational inefficiencies of this iterative approach quickly become unsustainable. This creates an opportunity to progress along two reasonable paths: “buy” a managed optical fiber network (MOFN, also known as a private dedicated network, or PDN) from a service provider, and/or “build” your own network around dark (or unlit) fiber. This inflection point is where Ciena Services comes in.
First, our professional services advisers will ask detailed questions to thoroughly understand your goals and provide expert guidance about which of these paths better fits your situation. If that’s “buy,” we can connect you with leading service providers worldwide and draw on our experience building global MOFNs—tailored with the right service model—for some of the most demanding cloud operators in the industry.
Next, if the better long-term approach is to build your network, we deliver all you need to become operational, from planning and design to deployment and testing. Our PMP®-certified project managers—who drive a 97% on-time service delivery rate on over 5,000 implementation projects a year—coordinate everything to ensure a smooth, on-budget network buildout.
Finally—and this is crucial—there are always-on growth paths. You may choose a dual-track strategy, buying a managed private network from a service provider as an interim step, while simultaneously planning to build your own later. You’re going to grow; we’re going to help you meet that growth by scaling according to your unique business needs.
Simplifying complexity with services
Of course, designing and deploying a network is part of the equation and day-to-day operations complete it. We can help you manage any or all of those operations according to your needs. As with scalability, our approach emphasizes choice and flexibility.
High-speed, high-traffic networks need a premium, secure, geo-diverse network operation center (NOC). Our Ciena engineers bring deep, multi-vendor NOC experience to monitor and manage incidents and problems for you, including coordinating with fiber providers. Networks also need robust, round-the-clock technical support, also provided by Ciena engineers. To further maintain high availability, we can embed a resident Ciena engineer with your team to deliver expert troubleshooting and issue-escalation for all Ciena infrastructure. To maximize up time, we can manage the same-day delivery and installation of spares, including all associated logistics. And we’ll provide a dedicated project manager to act as your agent, handling all this on your behalf.
Our Services team also understands that scope is customer specific. As such, we work with you to tailor our scope to your needs. That’s a conversation worth having.
What if your ops model includes enabling your engineers to focus more on innovation with advanced analytics, APIs, and automation? We’re ready. Technology certifications and role-based learning will help your team understand everything from foundational network concepts to becoming and staying current on your Ciena solution. And our Navigator Network Control SuiteTM (hosted or on-prem) provides your team with full network visibility and control.
Accelerating time-to-market with services
We know your world is white-hot competitive—any action that doesn’t clearly drive business value, risks yielding the advantage to someone else. With you and your staff fully engaged in delivering your solution, why devote energy to things that don’t directly feed that success? Whether delivering the high-speed and stable optical capacity your AI applications require or deploying, operating, and maintaining your network when and where you need, we optimize time to revenue with smooth, predictable execution in the least time. In other words, we get it right the first time.
It’s appropriate to pull up an old cliché, that “this is our day job.” Clichéd, but vital. These services, which you need to succeed—network planning and design, testing and deployment, managed operations, team learning—are all we do, every day. While your teams accelerate AI breakthroughs, we ensure the infrastructure never slows you down, doing what we do best to accelerate TTM and keep you there as your customer demand continues to increase.
Services that keep pace with AI innovation
Innovation stalls without networks built to match AI velocity. Ciena Services ensures your network enables that velocity, delivering the speed, resilience, and agility your workloads demand. From network design to daily operations, our experts and proven processes remove complexity, shorten timelines, and scale capacity intelligently. Just as the world is looking to you for AI and related expertise, you can trust that our experts, processes, and tools will get you to market rapidly and safely and keep your network available for your customers.