ECOC reflections: final part

Gazettabyte asked several attendees at the recent ECOC show, held in Cannes, to comment on key developments and trends they noted, as well as the issues they will track in the coming year. 

Dr. Ioannis Tomkos, Fellow of OSA & Fellow of IET, Athens Information Technology Center (AIT)

With ECOC 2014 celebrating its 40th anniversary, the technical programme committee did its best to mark the occasion. For example, at the anniversary symposium, notable speakers presented the history of optical communications. Actual breakthroughs discussed during the conference sessions were limited, however.

Ioannis Tomkos

It appears that after 2008 to 2012, a period of significant advancements, the industry is now more mainstream, and significant shifts in technologies are limited. It is clear that the original focus four decades ago on novel photonics technologies is long gone. Instead, there is more and more of a focus on high-speed electronics, signal processing algorithms, and networking. These have little to do with photonics even if they greatly improve the overall efficient operation of optical communication systems and networks.

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Infinera targets the metro cloud

Infinera has styled its latest Cloud Xpress product used to connect data centres as a stackable platform, similar to how servers and storage systems are built. The development is another example of how the rise of the data centre is influencing telecoms.

"There is a drive in the industry that is coming from the data centre world that is starting to slam into the telecom world," says Stuart Elby, Infinera's senior vice president of cloud network strategy and technology.

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Ranovus readies its interfaces for deployment

• Products will be deployed in the first half of 2015
• Ranovus has raised US $24 million in a second funding round
• The start-up is a co-founder of the OpenOptics MSA; Oracle is now also an MSA member.

Ranovus says its interconnect products will be deployed in the first half of 2015. The start-up, which is developing WDM-based interfaces for use in and between data centres, has raised US $24 million in a second stage funding round. The company first raised $11 million in September 2013.

Saeid Aramideh"There is a lot of excitement around technologies being developed for the data centre," says Saeid Aramideh, a Ranovus co-founder and chief marketing and sales officer. He highlights such technologies as switch ICs, software-defined networking (SDN), and components that deliver cost savings and power-consumption reductions. "Definitely, there is a lot of money available if you have the right team and value proposition," says Aramideh. "Not just in Silicon Valley is there interest, but in Canada and the EU."

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ECOC 2014: Industry reflections on the show

Gazettabyte asked several attendees at the recent ECOC show, held in Cannes, to comment on key developments and trends they noted, as well as the issues they will track in the coming year. 

Daryl Inniss, practice leader, components at market research firm, Ovum

 It took a while to unwrap what happened at ECOC 2014. There was no one defining event or moment that was the highlight of the conference.

The location was certainly beautiful and the weather lovely. Yet I felt the participants were engaged with critical technical and business issues, given how competitive the market has become.

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How Oclaro's CTO keeps on top of the data deluge

Being creative, taking notes, learning and organising data are challenges that all company executives and engineers face. Andy Carter, CTO of Oclaro, is renown for his sketched diagrams and his ability to explain stuff. Gazettabyte asked him to share his experiences and thoughts on the matter.

Andy Carter, CTO

"To be honest, I am an absolutely terrible note-taker. I always have been. At university, I could either listen to a lecture and try and understand it or take notes. I couldn’t do both.

If I did manage to take some notes, I rarely looked at them afterwards or found them useful.

At conferences, in the days of printed outlines, I’d make a few comments in the margins or underline items, but rarely in a separate notebook. 

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Finisar adds silicon photonics to its technology toolkit

• Finisar revealed its in-house silicon photonics design capability at ECOC
• The company also showed its latest ROADM technologies: a dual wavelength-selective switch and a high-resolution optical channel monitor.
• Also shown was an optical amplifier that spans 400km fibre links 

These two complementary technologies [VCSELs and silicon photonics] work well together as we think about the next-generation Ethernet applications.

Rafik Ward

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Oclaro demonstrates flexible rate coherent pluggable module

• The CFP2 coherent optical module operates at 100 and 200 Gig
• Samples are already with customers, with general availability in the first half of 2015
• Oclaro to also make more CFP2 100GBASE-LR4 products

The CFP2 is not just used in metro/ regional networks but also in long-haul applications

Robert Blum

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