Tackling scalability, space and automation challenges in data centre interconnect

Ciena is introducing a new data centre interconnect (DCI) platform that allows cloud, Internet content providers and data centre providers to quickly scale bandwidth and support high-speed data transfer, virtual machine migration and disaster recovery/backup between data centres. With an extremely compact design that helps reduce real estate costs, Ciena’s new Waveserver™ stackable interconnect platform also provides 60 percent more capacity per rack unit and nearly 20 terabits per fiber versus competing available platforms, to support surging bandwidth demands of web-scale data centres.

Leveraging Ciena’s experience with deployments for some of the world’s largest Internet content players and leading data centre providers, such as Equinix, Continuum, Digital Realty and Forsythe Data Centre, the new platform is powered by Ciena’s WaveLogic technology and built with open software principles to enable automation and simplify management. Additionally, with Ciena’s new Emulation Cloud, an open, rapid prototyping environment, network providers, data centre operators and developers can test and refine applications before they are added to the network.

 According to Ovum, overall global DCI revenue in 2014 grew more than 16 percent, reaching $2.5 billion. Nearly one-half of all DCI spending in 2014 was from communications service providers (CSPs), while the Internet content provider (ICP) segment grew 64 percent year over year. Ovum expects overall global revenue to hit $4.2 billion by 2019.

Purpose built for web-scale metro DCI applications, Waveserver is a highly-compact, stackable interconnect system that provides a reliable, high-capacity link to interconnect multiple data centres within a metro area. With Ciena’s OPn architecture approach and a set of open APIs, network providers can program Waveserver manually or remotely to quickly establish a connection via any smart device. Waveserver acts as a “bandwidth server” to provide “server like” deployment and provisioning.

Waveserver provides significantly lower cost per transported bit, lower cost per bit per rack, and lower power consumption versus available competing products. It provides a total of 800G of input and output made up of 400G Ethernet clients plus 400G of line capacity in just one rack unit. It also frees network owners from having to upgrade their hardware as they increase their client rates by supporting an arbitrary mix of 10, 40, and 100GbE clients.

Emulation Cloud is a new, open application development environment designed to allow data centre operators, application developers and other third-party developers to create, test and fine-tune customized web-scale applications tailored to their specific needs. Hosted in the cloud, Ciena’s Emulation Cloud helps accelerate DevOps and ease the integration with IT systems.