A brief mention of Ciena in an article about Microsoft's selection of Nortel to provide DWDM in its internal network:
Microsoft Agrees to Experiment With
Nortel's Optical Network
By SETH SCHIESEL
Microsoft Corp., known as a company that runs on e-mail, may be
right when it says that it demands more from its internal data
network than perhaps any other company in the nation. To expand the
capacity of that network, Microsoft has turned, at least tentatively, to
Nortel Networks Corp. of Canada.
On Monday, the two companies plan to announce that Microsoft has
agreed to try a new Nortel optical networking technology -- one
designed to expand the capacity of fiber-optic networks by a factor as
great as 32.
"We are in the process of looking for a supplier for our next-generation
backbone," said Gregg Atkins, a senior network engineer for Microsoft's
internal information technology group, referring to Microsoft's core
corporate network. "And we are looking at this emerging technology and
we see this as a solution for our corporate network."
It is not quite the solution yet. Microsoft, which does not plan to revamp
its network until early next year, wants to take the next six months or so
to determine which communications equipment makers will get the lion's
share of its business.
But the Microsoft trial is a big vote of confidence in the optical
networking group at Nortel, the former Northern Telecom Ltd. Nortel is
locked in battle against companies including Lucent Technologies and
Ciena to become the leader in a new sort of communications technology
called wave division multiplexing.
Wave division multiplexing, or WDM, transmits multiple wavelengths, or
colors, of light through a single strand of optical fiber. The system that
Microsoft has agreed to use could employ as many as 32 different
wavelengths.
Last week, Nortel said it had developed a long-distance WDM system
that uses 160 different wavelengths. But a network for a local area like
Microsoft's offices in the Seattle vicinity must be capable of adding or
removing traffic at many different points. For that reason, the WDM
technology for a smaller area cannot yet achieve the raw performance of
a system that transmits information across the country.
Microsoft's internal data load quadruples about every 18 months, Atkins
said. The system is used not only for internal communications including
electronic mail, he said, but also as a testing and proving ground for
Microsoft developers who want to make sure that their software will
work in congested networks.
About 18 months ago, Microsoft installed fiber-optic technology from
Fujitsu of Japan and Alcatel of France. But Atkins said those systems
were nearing obsolescence, at least for Microsoft's needs.
Nortel said the technology that Microsoft will use came to Nortel through
its acquisition of Cambrian Systems Corp. of Canada last year for about
$300 million.
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