Ciena's Multiwave Coredirector to Provide Intelligent Optical Core for Williams Nationwide Network.LINTHICUM, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 4, 1999-- CIENA Corporation Ciena Corporation NASDAQ: CIEN develops and markets communications network platforms and software, and offers professional services. The Company's broadband access, data and optical networking platforms, software tools, and global network services support worldwide telecom (Nasdaq: CIEN CIEN Ciena Corporation (stock symbol) ) today announced it has signed a three year agreement with Williams Communications, Inc. (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange : WCG WCG World Cyber Games WCG Worldwide Church of God WCG World Community Grid WCG Wellington Caving Group (caving club in New Zealand) WCG Washington Calligraphers Guild WCG West Coast Grocery ). 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 United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. , has 22,600 miles of fiber in the ground and will total 33,000 route miles The number of miles that are spanned by a telecommunications network. It does not include combined wire mileage due to multiple wires or fibers within a single cable or by overlapping segments, just the total geographic distance between cities or other terminal points. 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 Communications between computers, telephones and other electronic devices using light. An optical network is far more reliable and has far greater potential transmission capacity than networking in the electrical domain. See optical fiber. 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 A formula used by routers to determine the appropriate path onto which data should be forwarded. The routing protocol also specifies how routers report changes and share information with the other routers in the network that they can reach. (OSRP OSRP Off-site Source Recovery Project (Los Alamos National Laboratory) OSRP Oil Spill Response Plan OSRP Occupant Safety Research Partnership OSRP Optical Switching and Routing Protocol (Agilent Technologies) (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 Aberdeen Group is a provider of business-related research services. It has its headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts and belongs to the Harte-Hanks group. Founded in 1988, Aberdeen's research is used by over 2. . "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 VLSR Virtual Line Switched Ring (Ciena) VLSR Virtual Label Swapping Router VLSR Virtual Label Switching Router (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 A device installed at an intermediate point on a transmission line that enables new signals to come in and existing signals to go out. In a typical example, most signals pass through the device, but some would be "dropped" by splitting them from the line. , 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 (Computers) arranged so that the information may be transmitted in both directions simultaneously; - of communications channels between computers; contrasted with 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 Refers to an architecture that transmits data in channels. It often refers to the 64 Kbps channels in T1 lines, which were originally developed to handle digitized voice streams (TDM). See TDM. STS-N STS-N Synchronous Transport Signal Level 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 North America, third largest continent (1990 est. pop. 365,000,000), c.9,400,000 sq mi (24,346,000 sq km), the northern of the two continents of the Western Hemisphere. , with offices in Europe and Asia and investments in South America South America, fourth largest continent (1991 est. pop. 299,150,000), c.6,880,000 sq mi (17,819,000 sq km), the southern of the two continents of the Western Hemisphere. 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 A core competency is something that a firm can do well and that meets the following three conditions specified by Hamel and Prahalad (1990):
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 http://www.ciena.com. NOTE TO INVESTORS Forward-looking statements forward-looking statement A projected financial statement based on management expectations. A forward-looking statement involves risks with regard to the accuracy of assumptions underlying the projections. 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. |
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