Mike Hatfield, a veteran Telecom Valley innovator who's done stints at AFC (now Tellabs, Cerent (now Cisco), and more recently, Calix, is up to his old tricks again with his new optical networking venture Cyan. In parallel with Cyan's debut, the company has introduced its Z-Series multi-layer optical transport product and the CyMS management system.
According to Cyan, the Z-Series, which includes the Cyan Z33 and Z77 multi-layer transport platforms, combines a TDM and optical add/drop multiplexer, cross-connect and transport functions in platforms that can support over 100 Gbps per slot. Cyan's management software, the Cyan CyMS, is a multi-layer management system.
Not surprisingly, Hatfield believes that Cyan, similar to Calix, Cerent and AFC, will effectively become a bridge between the TDM and the packet worlds.
"Our solutions were purpose-built to help carriers capitalize on the explosive growth of bandwidth and the fundamental shift to packet services," says Michael Hatfield, CEO and co-founder of Cyan, in a release. "As traffic surges on relatively flat revenues, operators are challenged to find new ways to dramatically scale their network capacity with profoundly lower costs. Our customers have found that the Cyan Z-Series with multi-layer management helps them solve that challenge."
Hatfield's confidence about the company's prospects is justified. Thus far, Cyan says it has 20 signed customers--a diverse list that includes metro and regional Ethernet providers, local and regional broadband providers, wholesale transport providers, cable MSO and data center operators--for its products. Included in that customer list are a telco (Great Plains Communications) and a cable operator (Buckeye Telesystem). Great Plains is leveraging the platform to accommodate both TDM growth and migration to packet services, while Buckeye Telesystem said it is using the system to "transport mission critical Ethernet backhaul."
For more:
- see the official release here
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