CIEN
Adtran Q108
Adtran reported surprisingly good numbers and made specific comments that indicate the Great North American capex freeze of 2007 is thawing in a few areas. The company also had interesting things to say relative to access market growth and trends in the Enterprise portion of their business.
ADVA Q407
We summarize ADVA’s quarterly call and shed light on the issues surrounding a decline in revenue from channel partners as well as the threats they face in 2008.
LightReading Ethernet Conference Notes
This is a collection of notes and observations gathered during the LightReading Ethernet Conference that didn’t merit a standalone article. Unless noted, these conclusions were from conversations I had while at the conference, and not the opinions of presenters.
Ciena and The Future of Carrier Ethernet
Ciena (CIEN) shares have been on a bit of a tear recently, rising 20% in June. Unfortunately we haven’t participated in this gain and I believe it is worth explaining the historical thinking behind this decision.
MRV Goes 10GE to the Premises
MRV Communications (MRVC) announced the OptiSwitch 930, a 10G Ethernet demarcation box today. Demarc boxes are designed to sit at a customer site to manage and monitor the interface between the customer premises and the carriers network. While it is certainly a headline grabbing offering I don’t think significant demand exists for a 10G demarc device. It does highlight the increasing interest in hardware for providing ethernet services to businesses. (see “Enterprise Access Capex - A Ray of Hope?“)
BT’s 21CN - Reversing a Victorian Tradition
England is near the top of the list of countries I don’t like to visit. My wife likes watching the tedious Victorian England dramas of BBC “Masterpiece Theatre”. I last about 10 minutes until their images force memories of stuffy rooms, bad heating, weird ergonomics and truly god-awful food to resurface.
There is one exception to my stereotype. British Telecom’s (BT) 21st Century (21CN) initiative. No Victorian Bric-a-Brac here.
Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Huawei.
I know two American engineers who have relocated to China to lead optical module design teams at Chinese equipment companies. They live and work in China for Chinese companies, using their skills to build custom modules - skills no longer in demand from their American Tier-1 telecom equipment employers.
What’s Going On in Optical
OK, since I’ve been called out by Om Malik, I’m going to let rip with a stream-of-conciousness monologue on optical. No backspace key, no delete key, spelling corrections ex-post-facto. Here goes.
George Gilder - Telecosmic
The Wall Street Journal published a biographical article (free till May 10th) on George Gilder, one of the chief exhalers that inflated the optical bubble of 1999.
I mentioned Gilder last week in my first post on Wintegra (WNTG). He has consistently spoken positively of a network processor company called EZ-Chip and the holding company LanOptics Ltd. (LNOP). His support for the company has been unwavering for years as he continues to predict an NPU revenue ramp for EZ-Chip 6 months into the future. I hope this isn’t because EZ-Chip is a leading sponsor of his annual Telecosm shindig. How about some introspection into why things aren’t working out as he projected?
Future of Optical Networking - Lightreading Conference
I attended the Lightreading “Future of Optical Networking” conference in New York last week.
I had high expectations for the conference based on one I attended two years ago on Ethernet in the WAN. At that conference there were a number of participants from start ups and established companies who led a vigorous debate about what the future of SONET/SDH looked like. Even though I lived and breathed Ethernet over SONET/SDH at the time, and met regularly with the companies on the panel, the debate that ensued was highly educational and enlightening.
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Impressions of a Data Center
A few weeks back, while in CA for OFC/NFOEC, I was lucky to get a late night tour of 365 Main, a massive, state of the art data center near the Embarcadero in San Francisco. My guide, Peter Kranz, was someone I worked with and co-adventured with in College who is now the owner and CEO of Unwired, a San Francisco based CLEC. His equipment is in this data center, and he invited me in for a look.
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Ciena Sees Red at BT
Two things happened today. Ciena (CIEN) inked their contract with British Telecom for the BT’s 21CN project. And Marconi shareholders approved the sale of the company to Ericsson. Many readers know these two minor events have a bellwether common denominator - a willingness to meet the new price targets set by Chinese competition.
Just as Vietnam and Afghanistan were proxy wars for the 20th century superpowers, BT’s 21CN will be the first full-blown encounter between incumbent and Chinese research, customer service, accounting practices, and cost structures.
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