position for more than 25 years, investing heavily in miniaturising its technology whilst improving power efficiency.“ We still provide almost double the capacity as our nearest competitor on a single wavelength with our WaveLogic 6 coherent optics,” Kevin reveals.
Ciena’ s focus aims to address the dual challenge of increasing capacity whilst working to reduce energy consumption. Kevin explains that Ciena has also developed capabilities in IP and optical convergence – the integration of internet protocol networking with optical transmission systems, integrating coherent pluggable transceivers directly in routers.
“ Power utilisation is critical and minimising that is as important as growing the amount of fibre capacity. So Ciena’ s uniquely positioned on that front,” he says.“ Ciena is one of the only providers in the industry that has a true multilayer management system that’ s also AI ready as we continue to add AI functionality into our management platform – having a single pane of glass to monitor and troubleshoot is critical.”
Capturing a changing AI market Ciena’ s relationship with DC BLOX highlights the company’ s collaborative approach to data centre market development.
“ One thing we know for sure in the AI space, is that it’ s changing rapidly. The more communication and the more eyes on the field, the more likely you are to have great success.”
Kevin Sheehan CTO of the Americas, Ciena
The companies have worked together for a number of years across the US and involve regular communication to share market insights and technical requirements in order to anticipate future connectivity needs across the data centre industry.
“ We share our insights on where things are going and where additional connectivity might be needed,” Kevin says.“ We’ ve formed a very close partnership with them across all levels of the organisation and listen equally to what they’ re hearing and what they need – both from locations and from technology.” This engagement model reflects the rapidly changing nature of the AI infrastructure market and how the data centre industry needs to move to support it.
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