Books in 2019

Gazettabyte asks industry figures each year to cite the memorable books they have read. These include fiction, non-fiction and work-related titles. 

Here are the choices of Cisco’s Bill Gartner, Sylvie Menezo of silicon photonics start-up, Scintil Photonics, and Andrew Schmitt, directing analyst at Cignal AI.  

Bill Gartner, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Optical Systems and Optics.

At the top of my list is The Gene: An Intimate History, by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Mukherjee does an amazing job of telling the story of the gene, providing historical context dating back to pre-Darwin times through to modern advances in gene therapy. The material is complex but he is great at describing the evolution of thinking about genes and progress in the genome project in layman's terms. 

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Cisco-Acacia blurs the optical ecosystem vendor divide

Cisco Systems’ acquisition of Acacia Communications would make it first to market with a 400ZR pluggable coherent interface. So claims Vladimir Kozlov, CEO of LightCounting Market Research. 

“This is the main reason Cisco is doing the deal,” says Kozlov. “It is very important for Cisco to get its core routers with DWDM optics and push network evolution in this direction.” 

Cisco is keen to grow its market share among service providers and lead in the development of software for automating telecom networks centred around routers, he says: “This will be the best way for Cisco to re-energise its optical transport business.”

Tom Williams, Acacia“We are planning to sample [the 400ZR] before the deal closes,” says Tom Williams, vice president for marketing at Acacia. “Our plan is to be first to volume, that is the most important thing.”

The acquisition is expected to be completed in the second half of Cisco’s fiscal year, 2020 (February-July 2020).

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Verizon prepares its next-gen PON request for proposal

Verizon will publish its next-generation passive optical network (PON) requirements for equipment makers in the coming month.

Vincent O'Byrne

The NG-PON2 request for proposal (RFP) is being issued after the US operator completed a field test that showed a 40 gigabit NG-PON2 system working alongside Verizon’s existing GPON customer traffic.  

The field test involved installing a NG-PON2 optical line terminal (OLT) at a Verizon central office and linking it to a FiOS customer’s home 5 km away. A nearby business location was also included in the trial.

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Compass-EOS raises $42M

Compass-EOS has raised $42 million in investment. The Israeli start-up launched its r10004 IP core router in March and has so far announced two customers: NTT Communications and the China Education and Research Network, CERNET. The company says it has a second tier-one operator yet to be announced.

Asaf Somekh with the icPhotonics chip

"Both global operators have purchased routers on several occasions for several types of deployments," says Asaf Somekh, vice president of marketing at Compass-EOS. “There are also a couple more smaller operators that we cannot disclose at this stage." The company is  involved in several trials in the US, Japan and EMEA.

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Mellanox to acquire silicon photonics player Kotura

Source: Gazettabyte

Mellanox Technologies has announced its intention to acquire silicon photonics player, Kotura for $82 million.

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Cisco Systems demonstrates 100 Gigabit technologies

* Cisco adds the CPAK transceiver to its mix of 100 Gigabit coherent and elastic core technologies
* Announces 100 Gigabit transmission over 4,800km

"CPAK helps accelerate the feasibility and cost points of deploying 100Gbps"

Stephen Liu, Cisco

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Cisco Systems' intelligent light

Network optimisation continues to exercise operators and content service providers as their requirements evolve with the growth of services such as cloud computing. Cisco Systems' announced elastic core architecture aims to tackle  networking efficiency and address particular service provider requirements.

“The core [network] needs to be more robust, agile and programmable”

Sultan Dawood, Cisco

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