Thursday November 4, 12:52 pm Eastern Time
Company Press Release
Ciena's Multiwave Coredirector to Provide Intelligent Optical Core for Williams Nationwide Network
LINTHICUM, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 4, 1999--CIENA Corporation (Nasdaq: CIEN - news) today announced it has signed a three year agreement with Williams Communications, Inc. (NYSE: WCG - news). Under the contract, Williams Communications is expected to become the first customer to deploy CIENA's MultiWave CoreDirector(TM), the market's first intelligent optical core switch.
``CIENA's CoreDirector is central to Williams' optical network,' said Greg Floerke, vice president of engineering and construction for the Williams network. ``CoreDirector will provide the high-bandwidth switching, protection and
provisioning capabilities for our next generation optical network, making it possible for us to offer our carrier customers switched optical services ranging from wavelengths to protected private line services.'
Williams Communications' next-generation long-distance network, the fourth largest in the United States, has 22,600 miles of fiber in the ground and will total 33,000 route miles connecting 125 cities by the end of 2000. The fully-integrated architecture of the Williams Multi-Service Broadband Network(TM) couples ATM core switching with advanced optical networking technologies to provide carriers with data, voice, video and Internet services over the platform they choose.
``By choosing CoreDirector as the centerpiece of its optical networking strategy Williams Communications realizes the
scalability of terabit optical switching and networking intelligence in the optical core,' said Steve Chaddick, president of CIENA's Core Switching Division. ``Williams is truly building a next generation optical network and we're proud to be selected as the core.'
Pending successful completion of product trial and certification, which is expected in early calendar 2000, CIENA anticipates that Williams Communications will purchase and deploy at least $40 million in CoreDirector systems over the three year term of the contract.
Simpler, Smarter Optical Networks
CIENA's MultiWave CoreDirector features the networking intelligence of CIENA's LightWorks OS(TM) that will allow
Williams to bring on new services faster and realize new revenue more quickly. At the heart of LightWorks OS is the Optical Signaling and Routing Protocol (OSRP(TM)), which enables distributed, dynamic information exchange between networked CoreDirectors.
Through the software driven intelligence of OSRP, each CoreDirector is network aware, that is, able to ``see' the status of other CoreDirectors, evaluate the state of the network and select the best path for traffic to travel across the network to its destination.
For Williams' carrier customers, the benefit of this intelligence is rapid service delivery through real-time service provisioning, thereby allowing Williams to shorten the time to revenue. The networking intelligence of LightWorks OS dramatically eases the carrier's provisioning burden, enabling Williams to grow and manage its network with fewer operations staff.
``With its LightWorks OS, CIENA has made it possible for carriers to separate the growth of operations tasks from the
growth of network traffic,' said George Peabody, managing director of telecommunications research at industry analyst,
Aberdeen Group. ``With deployment of CIENA's CoreDirector, Williams will be able to scale its network and provision
services with limited manual intervention.'
Peabody continued, ``The advantages for Williams are really three-fold: First, Williams benefits from tremendous
operational savings associated with not having to hire operational staff at the same pace at which it grows traffic on its network. Second, time-to-revenue is shortened. And third, Williams' customers benefit from real-time service delivery, instead of the weeks, sometimes months, required by other network solutions.'
Protection in the Optical Layer
To provide its customers with integrated voice and data services, Williams required a scalable switching solution that allowed its network to simultaneously switch and manage multiple traffic types - without sacrificing the protection and reliability afforded by legacy network architectures.
``CoreDirector's unique ability to deliver rapid restoral through a mesh-based protection scheme supports our strategy of offering integrated voice and data services to our targeted carrier market,' said Floerke of Williams Communications.
``Most new network architecture approaches require a service provider to force-fit its network to the capabilities of the
vendor's products. With CoreDirector, Williams can optimize its network to specific traffic and service demands,' said
Aberdeen's Peabody.
Through LightWorks OS, CoreDirector supports simultaneous ring, linear line and path-level fast mesh protection, allowing multiple concurrent protection mechanisms including software-defined rings (VLSR(TM)), standards-compliant linear APS protection, and FastMesh(TM) path-level restoration.
Lower Cost Per Bit
CoreDirector's density, scalability, range of optical interfaces, and software-definable switching granularity, eliminate the need for additional SONET/SDH add/drop multiplexers, digital cross-connects, and optical cross-connects in next-generation network architectures. As a result, carriers like Williams Communications benefit from lower network equipment costs and realize the operational savings associated with managing a simpler network architecture.
``CIENA's CoreDirector is the first optical networking solution to deliver the flexibility to scale the network as traffic dictates and to provide unfaltering reliability and protection - all at a lower comparable cost per bit versus that delivered by traditional network architectures,' concluded CIENA's Chaddick.
MultiWave CoreDirector Specifications
Density: CoreDirector provides up to 640 Gb/s of full duplex
switching in a single 7 foot telco rack
Scalability: The initial release of CoreDirector supports 256
OC-48/STM-16 or 64 OC-192/STM-64 interfaces in a
single bay, with the ability to scale to multi-bay
configurations supporting multi-terabit capacity,
including OC-768/STM-256 transmission in the future
Range of
Interfaces: CoreDirector supports OC-3/STM-1, OC-12/STM-4,
OC-48/STM-16 and OC-192/STM-64 optical interfaces to
accommodate legacy switches and routers without
requiring standalone SONET/SDH multiplexers
Granularity: Any CoreDirector optical interface may be
software-configured for full wavelength switching or
channelized STS-N granularity, down to STS-1
Product Availability
CIENA's Core Director currently is in customer trial. CIENA expects field deployable units will be available in the first calendar quarter of 2000, with generally available units to follow.
ABOUT WILLIAMS COMMUNICATIONS GROUP
Williams Communications is North America's only exclusively carrier-focused fiber-optic network and the largest
independent source of end-to-end integrated business communications solutions -- data, voice or video. Based in Tulsa, Okla., Williams Communications has 9,000 employees primarily in North America, with offices in Europe and Asia and investments in South America and Australia. Approximately 85 percent of WCG stock is held by Williams which, in 1985,became the first energy company to harness its core competency as a builder of networks to enable competition in the communications industry. Additional information is available at www.williams.com and
www.williamscommunications.com.
ABOUT CIENA
CIENA Corporation's market-leading optical networking systems form the core for the new era of telecommunications
networks worldwide. CIENA's LightWorks(TM) architecture changes the fundamental economics of service-provider
networks by simplifying the network and reducing the cost to operate it. Additional information about CIENA can be found at ciena.com.
NOTE TO INVESTORS
Forward-looking statements in this release, including statements regarding the minimum value of the contract, are based on
information available to the Company as of the date hereof. The Company's actual results could differ materially from those
stated or implied in such forward-looking statements, due to risks and uncertainties associated with the Company's business,
which include the risk factors disclosed in the Company's Post Effective Amendment No. 2 on Form S-3 to Form S-4
Registration Statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Aug. 30, 1999. |
