life is good<g>.
It sure is. Thanks for posting the facts on this stock at Select Micros. I have about a 90% gain in this one!!! Yes, life is good. --Coz
Could poci be the supplier to Ciena??
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(BSNS WIRE) Ciena's Multiwave Coredirector to Provide Intelligent Optica
Ciena's Multiwave Coredirector to Provide Intelligent Optical Core for Williams
Nationwide Network
Business Editors
LINTHICUM, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 4, 1999--CIENA Corporation
(Nasdaq: CIEN) today announced it has signed a three year agreement
with Williams Communications, Inc. (NYSE: WCG). 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.
--30--mjr/ny*
CONTACT: CIENA Corporation
Denny Bilter or Aaron Graham
800/921-1144
pr@ciena.com
or
Williams Communications Group
Lynne Butterworth
918/573-3692
lynne.butterworth@wilcom.com
or
Investor Contacts:
CIENA Corporation
Suzanne DuLong or Jessica Towns
888/243-6223
ir@ciena.com
or
Williams Communications Group
David Cordeiro
918/573-3142
david.cordeiro@wilcom.com
KEYWORD: MARYLAND
INDUSTRY KEYWORD: INTERNET HARDWARE SOFTWARE NETWORKING
COMPUTERS/ELECTRONICS MARKETING AGREEMENT
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