Ciena Helps Unlock the Potential of Networks for Data Center Networking

Ciena, the network specialist, is working with customers to unlock the potential of their networks. As a result, performance increases and the organizations become more competitive.

“Our job is to interconnect data centers and to do what they ask us to do,” Chuck Kaplan, who is vice president of industry marketing at Ciena, told TMC’s Rachel Ramsey at ITEXPO (News - Alert) Miami. “Or to provide technology to service providers or network providers who need to respond to the applications that are happening inside the data center.”

Now, data centers are asking networks to be performing in ways and doing things they have not done in the past.

 “It’s a time of transformation,” Kaplan said.

For instance, traffic between data centers could run at what generally is an average level, interspersed by peaks.

 “You have to take care of those peaks,” Kaplan said. “So the networks are being asked to transform their services to actually reshape the service to match the traffic demand.”

Another example relates to collaborative research, such as a team of scientists researching an illness involving the human genome. It is taking place at one university, and other research institutions globally want to see what they are finding out. They need to get a huge file of data, both instantaneously and spontaneously.

In another trend, Kaplan says data centers are moving to more remote locations where there are less expensive utility costs and lower real estate costs, as well as lower salaries. But data now needs to be moved longer distances. “The network has to be ultra low-latency to make sure the applications keep working,” Kaplan said.

Overall, he sees a need for “network transformation” to accommodate the new kind of requirements which are being placed on the network. “The network has become really, really important in data center networking,” Kaplan said, “because of the new constraints and demands being placed upon it.”