Following friday’s completion of the Nortel MEN acquisition, Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings) has wasted no time. Today they offered some detail on their future plans for the combined product portfolio, a key focus of which will be converged optical Ethernet. There will be five product categories:
- packet-optical transport
- packet-optical switching
- carrier Ethernet
- software
- services
No real surprises there. These of course start out simply as buckets into which Nortel and Ciena products will be grouped while the teams themselves are reorganized around them. But this is a necessary early step in the integration.
At OFC/NFOEC this week, the company will also demonstrate several of its technologies:
- 100G using coherent detection over more than 1500km
- 40G optical connectivity between the CN 4200 and the OME 6500 acquired from Nortel
- 40G ultra longhaul over 3100km without regeneration, which can be re-purposed to 9000km undersea
- Coherent technology for colorless networking, where lack of dependency on fixed wavelengths promises to simplify network planning
That’s quite a bundle of activity, serving notice that the company has no intention of retreating into its shell while digesting the acquired assets. They’ve clearly been planning to hit the ground running. And I’ll bet that Nortel’s MEN division is ready to chip in as well. Now that the BK soap opera is over, they’ll want to prove their merit and thus establish themselves in the combined company, as well as simply to put the whole sad affair in the past and just back to doing what they do best.
It’s certainly a quick start to Ciena’s new, larger life. But no matter how hard they plan, there will be integration hurdles this year as theory meets reality. Some positive momentum can help though in getting over the bumps.
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I’m still a bit surprised that Ciena never levered its WorldWidePackets acquisition in the broadband sector, since it was the preeminent choice for optical Ethernet in the point-to-point (in opposition to PONs) fiber to the home market.