INDUSTRY INTERVIEW: Ciena Government Solutions
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Q: From your perspective with both Ciena and DoD, how do you see the department and the federal government in general adopting new and emerging technologies?
A: A major goal of DoD and other federal agencies is to increase situational awareness and reduce the decision-making process for the warfighter, which I consider myself proud to be. That’s the name of the game—getting directly down to the warfighter, and to the agencies that are supporting him. That means a focus on real-time information flow and processing—specifically, facilitating the flow of information up the chain of command to senior officials and agencies, then filtering and pushing it down to the warfighter on the battlefield.
Transformational architecture is the new buzzword that reflects the reality of overcoming these obstacles. To illustrate that, consider the synergies between what is being done in the space segment with efforts being made in terrestrial networks; the only difference between the two is the air gap. Are you launching signals over vacuum, air or fiber? Then, you have latency involved. We’re doing a lot of work here. We like to envision that eventually in the DoD networking community the space segment and the terrestrial segment will be tied together, forming a single network.
I also would highlight that there is significant focus on processing data from new, novel data sources and sensors, which are producing tremendous flows of useful data for agencies and warfighting organizations. Supporting this information processing and transfer requires dynamic networks, which are the plumbing that connects the sources to users. The work now is on software tools that complement networks, and on computing capabilities to increase situational awareness.
Q: How is Ciena serving the needs of DoD today?
A: As the optical transport system provider for DoD in the Defense Information Systems Network, we help provide sufficient and available bandwidth throughout the network for computing resources, storage and sensors. In other words, all critical information is eventually aggregated and flows across Ciena-engineered “plumbing.” We are also working on intelligent optical switching and transport technology that comprises the network core of DoD information processing, which can help the department and other critical government agencies more flexibly and economically meet user requirements.
Q: How does your military experience help you at Ciena?
A: My military experience helps me understand the big picture of what’s going on within DoD and national security. There are technologies that Ciena offers today as well as those we are currently engineering that fit nicely into the role of transformational networks. However, there are sacrifices at times. It’s a second career, and managing two careers is tough. Ciena is very supportive in allowing some time away from work. It is a worthy cause, and that’s why I choose to manage two careers.
Q: What do you see as the leading industry trends for the future, and how is Ciena participating in that?
A: The networking industry is changing, and Ciena is at the leading edge of that evolution. Our core competency is in optics, and we’re continually making the optical layer more dynamic and flexible. We are also focused on developing agile and programmable technology that enables flexible, converged Ethernet-based networks.
So what are we talking about when we say agile, dynamic and programmable? A user, or a sensor, should be able to request a connection from the network, which could be the Internet or a private defense network. Let’s say I want a connection between my sensor and another processor, and I want that connection to be a certain bandwidth size and to last for a certain length of time. The network should be intelligent enough to process this request. While there are a number of complex processes that take place to make this happen, it should be transparent to the user.
Interface and system programmability is also changing. We’re no longer building networks with fixed interfaces. We did that for years, but the technology has evolved tremendously. Today, everything is tunable, programmable and pluggable. What that does is “future-proof” your network infrastructure for new developments and protocols that researchers and scientists can develop. I would also like to mention security. All of this fantastic information sharing brings new security requirements. Imagine this real time information flow, and what happens to this capability without protection. At Ciena, we’re looking at next-generation security schemes, including how we can “tag” our products with different levels of security certifications. ♦
Jeff Verrant, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
