FEATURE OPTICAL SYSTEMS


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cent of IoT data will be processed by cloud service providers. And ADVA’s Rettenberger concurs that the industry transition towards the cloud is well under way, with industry moving from, as he says, ‘distributed communication culture to a centralised culture’. ‘Data centres are the new hot-spots and


cornerstones of networks,’ he said. ‘We also see central office locations being converted into facilities with computer and storage resources… as well as micro-data centres being built on customer premises.’ ECI’s Homa concurs, adding: ‘IoT applications


will ultimately drive a shiſt in cloud-computing models from massive centralised data centres to highly distributed, hyper-converged clouds sitting in close physical proximity to the IoT clients.’ Cloud-based storage services are becoming more


Figure 1: This graphic from Nokia illustrates a variety of connected objects, from autonomous cars, home security systems and wearable devices, to garbage bins, street lighting, and emergency vehicles


inexpensively connect to other data centres as well as enterprises and, increasingly, public cloud providers. For example, Ciena has developed myriad DCI


products for enterprises, web-scale operators and data centre operators to connect to different sites. Te stackable interconnect system, Waveserver, for one, promises ‘extreme’ capacity and distance. Te Infinera Cloud Xpress was the first


purpose-built platform for the popular DCI market. Coriant recently launched Coriant Groove, a drawer-based pizza box system with a low initial cost. And last year ADVA released its FSP 3000 CloudConnect aſter extensive consultation with its internet and cloud service provider customers. As ADVA’s Rettenberger pointed out: ‘Today the


industry is all about building larger-scale data centres, connecting and clustering them so, given this we launched our new platform for hyper-scale, cloud data centres, called FSP 3000 Cloud Connect.’ But while industry players have repeatedly


highlighted how IoT applications will demand fast and low-latency network response, security is also a thorny issue. For example, in medical applications, live data updates from a patient’s pacemaker to the doctor could be intercepted and manipulated. Indeed, the huge amount of data being transported between data centres could be a prime target for any hacker.


20 FIBRE SYSTEMS Issue 12 • Summer 2016


widely used, as local storage systems struggle with the explosion of data generated by smartphones, sensors and countless other IoT devices. Ciena’s Blair, for one, reckons most of this data will be tucked away in cloud-based storage services, adding that ‘these will make high-capacity, scalable and secure connections key’.


The huge amount of data being transported between data centres could be a prime target for any hacker


With this in mind, data centre network


connections will require more security features, with advances in network equipment also delivering low latency, in-flight data encryption. According to Infinera’s Mahajan, optical


channels lying at the heart of multi-terabit scale networks can be encrypted using the standard – and virtually unbreakable – advanced encryption, AES-256. Other vendors, including ADVA and Ciena, have also introduced wire-speed encryption at the optical layer to their products in recent months. Beyond the optical transport infrastructure and


data centres, industry players are also hosting more and more systems on scalable cloud platforms in a bid to address the data influx from internet- connected devices. In December 2014, US-based IT industry analyst IDC predicted that come 2020, more than 90 per


Direct and indirect impacts As optical systems vendors prepare for the IoT, they are also questioning how much it will impact their business. Vendors agree that there is a huge market opportunity waiting to be tapped. ‘We expect much greater demand around the


areas of mobile backhauling, aggregation networks, and also networks in the context of cloud connectivity,’ said Coriant’s Uwe Fischer. ‘So yes, in terms of impact we expect more business and more revenue from the IoT.’ In one sense, it’s business as usual for developers


of high-bandwidth optical systems. ‘Optical networking has always been the workhorse for long-term, year-on-year growth that has been fuelled by different trends at different times,’ commented ADVA’s Stephan Rettenberger. However, the IoT may have more far-reaching


impacts than the bandwidth drivers of old, as optical transport vendors consider the business case for adopting IoT internally. Coriant, for one, also anticipates applying IoT technologies to its own business processes, using them to manage a more complex supply chain or create new service models based around data analytics, for example. ‘Tis means we are not only a system and


solutions provider for Internet of Tings but we’re also a user of them. Tat is a second, very interesting aspect that will also have a concrete positive business impact on us,’ Fischer concluded.l


Rebecca Pool is a freelance science writer based in Boston, UK


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