Does Cisco Systems' CPAK module threaten the CFP2?

Cisco Systems has been detailing over recent months its upcoming proprietary optical module dubbed CPAK. The development promises to reduce the market opportunity for the CFP2 multi-source agreement (MSA) and has caused some disquiet in the industry.

Source: Cisco Systems, Gazettabyte, see comments

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Optical industry restructuring: The analysts' view

The view that the optical industry is due a shake-up has been aired periodically over the last decade. Yet the industry's structure has remained intact. Now, with the depressed state of the telecom industry, the spectre of impending restructuring is again being raised.

In Part 2, Gazettabyte asked several market research analysts - Heavy Reading's Sterling Perrin, Ovum's Daryl Inniss and Dell'Oro's Jimmy Yu - for their views.

Part II: The analysts' view

"It is just a very slow, grinding process of adjustment; I am not sure that the next five years will be any different to what we've seen"

Sterling Perrin, Heavy Reading

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Ciena: Changing bandwidth on the fly

Ciena has announced its latest coherent chipset that will be the foundation for its future optical transmission offerings. The chipset, dubbed WaveLogic 3, will extend the performance of its 100 Gigabit links while introducing transmission flexibility that will trade capacity with reach.

Feature: Beyond 100 Gigabit - Part 1

"We are going to be deployed, [with WaveLogic 3] running live traffic in many customers’ networks by the end of the year"

Michael Adams, Ciena

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Boosting the 100 Gigabit addressable market

Alcatel-Lucent has enhanced the optical performance of its 100 Gigabit technology with the launch of its extended reach (100G XR) line card. Extending the reach of 100 Gigabit systems helps makes the technology more attractive when compared to existing 40 Gigabit optical transport. 

"We have built some rather large [data centre to data centre] networks with spans larger that 1,000km in totality"  

Sam Bucci, Alcatel-Lucent

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Is optical components becoming a buyer's market?

Despite warnings that price cutting could erode the margins of high-valued optical components, analysts explain why they remain upbeat about the market's prospects.

"An organisation's gross margins ride on these new products"

Daryl Inniss, Ovum Components.

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Optical components: The six billion dollar industry

Chart Watch: Ovum Components

The service provider industry, including wireless and wireline players, is up 6% year-on-year (2Q10 to 1Q11) to reach US $1.82 trillion, according to Ovum. The equipment market, mainly telecom vendors but also the likes of Brocade, has also shown strong growth - up 15% - to reach revenues of over $41.4 billion. But the most striking growth has occurred in the optical components market, up 28%, to achieve revenues of over $6 billion, says the market research firm.

Source: Ovum

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Google and the optical component industry

Google caused a stir at ECOC by requesting a new 100 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) interface, claiming the existing 100 Gigabit standards fall short of what is needed.

According to a report by Pauline Rigby, Google wants something in between two existing IEEE interface standards. The 100GBase-SR10, which has 10 parallel channels and a 125m span, has too short a reach for Google.

“What is good for an 800-pound gorilla is not necessarily good for the industry. It [Google] should have been at the table when the IEEE was working on the standard."

Daryl Inniss, practice leader, components, Ovum

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