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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Ericsson and Ciena collaborate on IP-over-WDM and SDN

Do company partnerships work? Ericsson and Ciena certainly think so, and provide a compelling argument for their collaboration in the areas of IP-over-WDM and software-defined networking (SDN). More such partnerships should also be expected.

Jan Häglund

Ericsson and Ciena have signed a global strategic agreement that provides Ericsson with Ciena's optical networking technology, while Ciena benefits from Ericsson's broader service provider relationships.

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ClariPhy samples a 200 Gigabit coherent DSP-ASIC

ClariPhy Communications has entered the 100 Gigabit coherent merchant chip market after announcing first samples of its LightSpeed-II devices. 

The family of coherent digital signal processing ASICs (DSP-ASICs) is manufactured using a 28nm CMOS process. "We believe it is the first 28nm standard product, and leaps ahead of the current generation [DSP-ASIC] devices," says Paul Voois, co-founder and chief strategy officer at ClariPhy.

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Coriant adds optical control to SDN framework

Coriant's CTO, Uwe Fischer, explains its Intelligent Optical Control and how the system will complement Transport SDN.

"You either master all that complexity at once, or you find the right entry point and provide value for each concrete challenge, and extend step-by-step from there" 

Uwe Fischer, CTO of Coriant

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OIF defines carrier requirements for SDN

The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) has achieved its first milestone in defining the carrier requirements for software-defined networking (SDN).

"The orchestration layer will coordinate the data centre and transport network activities and give ... easy access to new applications"

Hans-Martin Foisel, OIF

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