Ciena Insights is Ciena's official news blog, keeping you informed about Ciena news and happenings, and giving you a forum for engaging in conversations with Ciena. Bo Gowan is the blog moderator, and Ciena's social media manager.
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This last weekend as I struggled through a visit to Best Buy and a fruitless search through Amazon.com, I had a revelation: I’m having a harder time figuring out how to get my music to play where and when I want it than I am my TV and video.
Imagine that.
The frustrating situation I’m having with my expansive iTunes music library is less an issue of making my music mobile (my iPhone does that like a charm) and more a matter of making my speakers mobile – as listening to music in the backyard using my iPhone speakerphone is less than satisfying (yes, I've looked into Apple AirPlay and it's not for me).
But whatever issues I’m having with my music, they are not extending to TV and video. In fact, my TV watching options have actually jumped ahead of my personal needs as a consumer.
My TV provider now allows me to access a variety of my channels online, so my home TV follows me wherever my laptop goes. I also recently purchased a Tivo Premiere XL, which gives me access to my Netflix list and both Amazon and Blockbuster movies on demand (not to mention Hulu Plus, but I am not a subscriber). When I go completely mobile, I have Netflix streaming through my iPhone.
Now, sometimes all these options can get a little confusing (see When did TV get so complicated?), but in the end I'd rather have too many options for my TV watching pleasure than not enough.
Are consumer TV viewing habits really changing?
So how are all these new TV and movie viewing options affecting consumer viewing habits, especially their desire to pay for a traditional TV subscription? It seems that the answer to that question depends on who you ask.
Today's pay-TV providers are busy working to expand their model past the traditional TV screen and onto any device (e.g. PC or mobile). This is especially true in North America, as a new study by Parks Associates shows that by mid-2011, 81% of the region's pay-TV subscribers will have access to "TV Everywhere" services. Europe and the rest of the world fall significantly behind in this area (see below chart).
This feature seems to be targeted squarely at younger viewers, and for good reason. The same Parks study found that nearly 40% of U.S. broadband consumers ages 18-34 find TV Everywhere services very appealing.
And while some analysts worry that the rise of Netflix (which is now the bandwidth hog king of North America) and other non-traditional video options will lead to video-cord-cutting, recent studies show that is not happening yet. Separate studies by ESPN (here) and Magid Associates (here) have shown that cord-cutting has been minimal to-date. Of course, it's the "Gen Y" demographic that is just now coming of age that has the pay-TV industry worried. And studies like this one show that there is a real reason to worry, with a large percent of younger viewers would at least consider cutting their pay-TV service.
In the end, it seems we are too early in the evolution of TV and video viewing to know what the future holds. But on the journey there, I plan to enjoy my expanded viewing options.
Just a friendly reminder that Ciena expects to announce results for our fiscal second quarter ended April 30, 2011 this Wednesday, June 8, 2011. Results will be announced via Business Wire before the open of the financial markets, with the press release also available on Ciena’s website at www.ciena.com.
In conjunction with the announcement, Ciena’s management will host a live audio web broadcast beginning at 8:30 AM ET on the morning of June 8th. If you'd like to join the call, broadcast details are posted at http://investor.ciena.com/, and a replay of the event will be available at the same location for those who can't make the live broadcast.
Hello from Warsaw, Poland. For more pictures of the EMEA Innovation Lab in front of the Palace of Culture and Science, see the photo album on the Ciena Facebook page.
In what I plan to have as a regular monthly post here on the Ciena Insights blog, we start off the month of June by looking back at the five most important stories and topic lines from May. Of course, this is just my list. Did I miss any that you would have included? Let me know in the comments section.
1.) The Optical Hardware market showed year-over-year growth in 1Q2011. New reports from Dell'Oro (here), Infonetics (here) and Ovum (here) all showed that while the optical market saw its normal first quarter seasonal dip, year-over-year growth compared to 1Q2010 was seen at anywhere from 7% to 10%.
2.) Cloud was one of the hot topics of the month. Talk of "The Cloud" was everywhere last month, as the topic has made its way into the mainstream (see Get your head in the clouds). Cloud was especially big around EMC World in Las Vegas early in May. Ciena's place in this industry discussion has centered around making the network that enables cloud services more intelligent and elastic. Below is a playlist of Cloud videos that delve into the details of how critical the network is to cloud services.
3.) Ciena 100G stayed in the news with a new customer, the beginning of a major deployment, and another award.SURFnet became the latest public customer for Ciena's coherent 100G solution, using the technology on its R&E network in the Netherlands. Previously announced customer Internet2 began the deployment phase of its 100G network in Washington DC, Philadelphia and New York. You can follow along with the deployment on the Internet2 blog. Finally, Ciena's coherent 100G technology won another award -- this time at the World Vendor Awards in the "Technology Foresight" category.
4.) Ciena hired industry veteran Ed McCormack to head up its Submarine Networking business. Ciena got a little deeper into the submarine market with the hiring of Ed McCormack last month. Ed takes the title of vice president and general manager of international accounts and submarine systems. Ed will be responsible for strategic partnerships, business development and customer support for Ciena’s submarine business, and brings with him a wealth of experience in the submarine networking market.
5.) Ciena's global footprint continued to expand with two more office openings in May. The first was relatively close to home, with Gary Smith helping with the opening celebration for Ciena's new office space in RTP, North Carolina. Also officially opening was Ciena's new Buenos Aires, Argentina, office. You can see pictures of both offices on the Ciena Facebook page (RTP here and Argentina here).
You don't hear as much about the U.S. Broadband Stimulus these days. It has been more than two years since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) poured billions of dollars into the staggering U.S. economy, a piece of which was allocated towards building out the nation's broadband infrastructure.
That piece added up to $7.2 billion. Those broadband stimulus funds were split between the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) with its Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) and the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) and its Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP). Both agencies completed two separate rounds of grants that allowed various institutions to apply for funding for their requested projects. By the Fall of 2010, all funds had been awarded.
Of course, getting the money is only half the work (and some might argue it's the easy half). Turning these proposals into real, working networks isn't always a simple task. This is especially true for many of the smaller institutions and rural telcos that have possibly never taken on a project of this magnitude before.
Until recently, one tool available to these entities what the RUS list of approved telecom gear -- what it called its "List of Materials." As of last week, however, that list is no more. That list's demise comes at a time when many BTOP and BIP funded projects are at critical points of planning and deployment.
A few weeks ago at the TIA 2011 event in Dallas, I was able to talk to Chis Janson about this topic. Chris is Ciena's expert for government and public sector networks.
The question I posed to Chris was basically this: You got your broadband stimulus funding, now what?
Chris, of course, had an answer, as Ciena is helping various BTOP and BIP awardees to figure out that exact question. In fact, Ciena recently announced a 100G deployment with Internet2 and a 40G deployment with Navajo Nation that were both made possible by broadband stimulus funds.
In the below video, Ciena's Chris Janson talks about the next steps for broadband stimulus awardees, and how Ciena can help them go from proposal to deployment.
31 May 2011, 08:18 PM EDT - Mark Malone —
Here is small build-out in OH using the funds.
http://www.onecommunity.org/ which is part of the http://www.ohiomiddlemile.org/
Dublin is not only the home of Guinness, but also of TM Forum Management World – at least for 2011 and 2012. If the rumours are to be believed, this event might get tired of Irish beer in a couple of years and look further afield for a new home and favourite drink.
A theme is clearly present both inside and outside the shinny Convention Centre in the Irish capital: the Cloud. Together with LTE, the Cloud is expected to be a key challenge for the telecoms industry, in particular for the OSS/BSS sector. And while the clouds outside continue in a very reliable fashion to produce more and more rain, we concentrate on what the Cloud will mean for service providers and enterprise customers.
The Catalyst demos, where a group of vendors demonstrate how to address an industry challenge posed by a key player, is a central part of the exposition and gives us a good indication of areas where there is a lot of innovation taking place. As you could expect, many of the Catalyst demos and keynote sessions taking place this year are focused on different aspects of the Cloud.
Ciena is participating in the Cloud Network Elasticity Catalyst Demonstration, sponsored by Deutsche Telecom and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, which shows a scalable enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure that leverages bandwidth-on-demand, or in other words an ‘elastic Cloud’.
The elastic Cloud will allow new business models such as pay-per-use with service guarantees, potentially changing the relationship between service provides and the enterprise. Therefore, a new approach is needed that borrows concepts from the Internet model combined with flexible billing models, security and reliable performance – and the industry is coming together to discuss how to best address these challenges.
With its packet optical and Carrier Ethernet architecture, Ciena provides the high-performance, on-demand backbone network – also known as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). And according to our conversations with Analysys Mason during the show, IaaS is an industry growth area for the next few years, so expect to hear more and more about it.
And while the Cloud innovators are hard at work, the clouds outside are on a break, so maybe it is time to try a famous Guinness.
Yesterday, Ciena announced the official opening of its new office in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Local media were invited to the new facilities to see the team and talk to local Ciena execs. That included the newly appointed Marcelo de la Fuente, who is Ciena's new Regional Managing Director for Argentina and the Southern Cone, which encompasses Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Peru.
Ciena is by no means new to Argentina, as we have had operations there since 2001 and already provide solutions to all the major service providers in the country as well as regional cable operators, carriers and enterprises.
Ciena’s Argentina office will serve as a regional sales hub and is also an integral support center for all local and international Ciena customers with a presence in Latin America. Ciena’s specialist engineers based in Buenos Aires provide critical network operations, maintenance and implementation functions including post-engineering, pre-engineering and program management for all regional network deployments. In addition, Ciena staff plan to work with leading universities in Argentina to train future engineers in important regional networking technologies such as optical communications and Carrier Ethernet.
Ciena's expansion in Argentina comes at a time when the region is seeing very strong growth in the deployment of telecom and networking technology. In fact, in the last week, both Infonetics (here) and Dell'Oro (here) have issued quarterly reports on the optical networking market that have the CALA region (Caribbean and Latin America) with the fastest year-over-year growth in the world for 1Q2011.
“The Caribbean and Latin America region is a high-growth market for Ciena. As demand for additional capacity and new media-rich services intensifies, our expanded operations and investment in Argentina strengthens our ability to address the networking challenges of customers in the region as they look to meet rising traffic demands while effectively controlling their capital and operating expenses,” said Fabio Medina, GM and VP of sales for Ciena in Latin America, in a statement furing the office opening.
Prior to joining Ciena, de la Fuente held several sales leadership positions in Argentina for ZTE Corporation. He also previously worked at Nortel Networks Argentina, where he managed various regional projects for regional operators and systems engineering projects with increasing roles of responsibility. de la Fuente holds a Bachelors of System Engineering from Universidad CAECE in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Keeping on top of industry news isn't always easy, especially when you have times like last week when there seemed to be a deluge of interesting new reports and industry research all published at the same time. After stifting through most of it, here's my attempt at filtering through the most interesting news items:
Analyst firm Infonetics issued a string of new reports that together painted a picture of the optical market. In what was called a "mixed quarter" for the optical hardware market, Infonetics said 1Q global revenues saw a "typical" 12% QoQ seasonal decline, with a 7% YoY increase. Strength was in WDM and ROADM, with strength in North America and weakness in Asia Pacific. A second report on the ROADM WSS components market highlighted the strength in this segment, showing a doubling of revenues in 2010 vs 2009. Infonetics says WDM ROADM equipment is the fasted growing segment of the optical market.
[Update: On May 25, Dell'Oro came out with their own 1Q2011 numbers for the Optical market, showing a 10% YoY increase in quarterly revenues to a global total of $3 billion.]
[Update 2: On May 26, Ovum came out with their 1Q2001 nubmers as well. Their numbers showed the optical market up 7% YoY.]
There are now more phones in the world than people, according to this new study. That feat is due mainly to the huge growth of mobile phones, which now outnumber traditional fixed line phones 5.6 billion to 1.32 billion (see below chart)
An increasing number of those 5.6 billion mobile phones are smartphones according to this new Gartner report. Gartner says smartphones accounted for 23.6% of overall sales in the first quarter of 2011, an increase of 85% YoY.
It's not just smartphones that are growing, this new study shows an increase of 1.3 million new fixed-line broadband Internet connections in the U.S. for 1Q2011.
All that new data has to go somewhere, and the three main U.S. telecom industry associations (USTA, NCTA and CTIA) joinly issued a new report stating that since 2008, cable, telcos and wireless operators have collectively spent $250 billion to expand mobile and wireline broadband availability to consumers in the United States.
It was about a year ago when I joined Ciena that I first began hearing about OTN. OTN, short for Optical Transport Network, wasn't something we talked about that often at Nortel, but it was a central part of Ciena's strategy for the future of the core network (and a key technology in the Ciena ActivFlex 5400 series optical switch).
Over the past year, OTN has gradually begun to get more press and attention, but has generally stayed under the radar as topics like 100G, Carrier Ethernet, and wireless backhaul have taken the lion's share of the industry's attention.
That may be changing. Over the last few weeks, OTN has seemingly taken the limelight as the new must-have feature that any forward thinking service provider is going to need in its next-gen optical network.
A new OTN study by analyst firm Infonetics shows what they call "a huge shift in carrier plans for optical switching."
"There is a huge shift between now and 2014 in the area of optical switching, with the number of carriers with plans to deploy OTN interfaces on electrical switching equipment rising from 37% to 84%," notes Andrew Schmitt, directing analyst for optical at Infonetics Research.
This blog post on The Voidi View does a nice job detailing the flavors and advantages of OTN. One of the most obvious of those advantages is the fact that traditional SONET/SDH was designed to max out at 40G. With the inevitable move to 100G in core transport, as well as the upswing in packet services like 10GbE, 40GbE and eventually 100GbE, OTN is seen by many carriers as the migration path for their aging SONET/SDH infrastructure.
Heavy Reading analyst Sterlin Perrin talked to this migration last week at the Light Reading Packet-Optical Transport Evolution event in NYC.
This week was the TIA 2011 tradeshow in Grapevine, Texas (TIA stands for the Telecommunications Industry Association). Below is a postcard from the show. You can see more pictures on the Ciena Facebook page.
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4.) Ciena hired industry veteran Ed McCormack to head up its Submarine Networking business. Ciena got a little deeper into the submarine market with the 
Dublin is not only the home of Guinness, but also of 
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