OFC 2012 Insights from Tony Pearson

Is Light the New Heavy? A Traveling Light Report

This Finisar trip saw me beat my previous best around the world time by three full days, jetting from San Francisco to China to India and back home again the long way…glamorous as you might expect. In this posting I’ll share observations on two places, an old favorite of mine, Shanghai, and a new city on my travels, Bangalore, or rather Bengaluru as now renamed, in India.

On my first stop, I was once again amazed by the modernity of Shanghai’s transit options. This time, however, I was overwhelmed with the realization that there is an inestimable quantity of concrete that is the new infrastructure of the city. The highway leading away from the airport, for instance, is an elevated and well-groomed thoroughfare stretching many miles and often passing between tall apartment and office structures. This concrete roadway is supported along its entire length by massive concrete pillars. I want to be careful though not to paint a picture of ugliness – keep in mind that concrete was invented by the Romans and used most famously in the construction of the well-known Coliseum.

Empires have been built over time on innovations in transportation – some of the best examples are the Roman roads, the British canals, cooled produce transit in the US, and the Internet. The most inspiring to me, in the context of this trip, would be the heavy industry and its ability to manipulate gigantic concrete structures to form the new transit networks for the worlds growing industrialized centers of commerce.

Which brings me to Bengaluru…

I have never been to India and honestly I did not expect what I found in my short stay. I have often heard of the lack of infrastructure of many kinds, but what I found was an abundance of it. There are buildings, functional and beautiful, historic and modern spread across the town. It would be a major disservice if I didn’t also mention the warm welcome I received from everyone I met in business meetings, local restaurants, hotels and bars…and the food–I was an Indian food fan before this trip, I’m a bigger fan now thanks in part to the volume and variety I consumed over breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Of course, much of the current infrastructure is visibly in need of maintenance and repair and as in many cities with growing populations, there are very significant challenges in traffic management although there are few greater adrenalin rushes than making an unscheduled U-turn through two streams of traffic while navigating around a couple of cows – literally (see photos below)! I was also surprised to learn on the cab ride from the airport at 2:00am that the journey of 25 km with minimal traffic would take an hour. Here again is evidence of a modern heavy industry with the ongoing construction of an overhead city metro system and ultra-modern business campus’ with facilities to make Silicon Valley envious.

Aside from the presence of heavy industry in both cities and their respective marches into increasing prosperity on the global stage, the other thing that is common is their push to deploy national fiber-optic communication networks to support wireless backhaul and high bandwidth services to businesses, buildings and homes. The spread of this new infrastructure based on the transport of light, rather than people and goods is not so easy to see and appreciate…but it’s there. It’s everywhere.

It made me wonder if this “light industry” will have the same impact on the world as did its predecessor, the heavy industry. Will transparent strands of glass fiber transporting ever increasingly heavy payloads of light build a new Global Empire without boundaries or at least possibilities? Is Light the new Heavy?

This blog is about fiber optics, so what’s my point?

This week’s blog post comes from guest blogger, Tony Pearson.

This week took me across the continental US. As this seems to have become a recurring theme for me, the journey itself was riddled with delays, multiple connections and this time, excessive heat! That said, it’s actually the journey I’d like to focus on in this blog, and something else that’s become hot on global travels – WiFi hotspots. Given the ubiquity of the hot spots in my observation, I would not be surprised if the very word will slip into obsolescence within a matter of just a few years, much as the phrase dial-up seems to have slipped from my vocabulary – interesting side note: on this trip I was actually asked why I couldn’t connect through the hotel phone if the WiFi connection didn’t work – preposterous!

With a travel itinerary covering remote rural locations to the center of major US Cities, with hotels firmly in the realm of the budget conscious, it is still the case that I am surprised nowadays when a wireless broadband service is not offered in a hotel room or airport…and now train station – yes, Amtrak has wireless service in their waiting rooms! Even the newest sports arenas advertise WiFi hotspots and the cell phone service which now of course needs to support the activity of 40,000 plus Facebook, Twitter and texting addicts, not to mention the relentless onslaught of e-mail and the odd photo of faraway family. So WiFi’s everywhere and I can be online anywhere, but this blog is about fiber optics, so what’s my point?

It was a retired long distance truck driver in a sports bar/restaurant during my trip that was the real inspiration for this blog. The first thing I noticed was how quickly he grasped the concept of “what I do” – a question I’ve been asked by family and friends over the two decades that I’ve been in the business that typically elicited blank unknowing stares in response to my weak effort to condense the function and value of high-speed semiconductor laser technology transmitting over glass fiber. But this guy got it! It seems that as the world becomes more connected we’re all starting to grasp the importance and now makeup of the “plumbing” that enables our connected world. Ironically this could perhaps be compared with the heightened awareness of the homeowner living in hard water regions to the value of the very material we aim to replace in the communications world – copper!

He went on to ask a very insightful question – “aren’t (I) worried about the spread of WiFi – won’t that eliminate the need for my fancy lasers?” I think it’s a question he perhaps later wishes he hadn’t asked as I waxed lyrical to the contrary, that in fact I LOVE WiFi and smart phones and social media and and and…because they all end up somewhere on a piece of glass, and at both ends of that piece of glass, there’s an opportunity for an existing Finisar product, or new Finisar Innovation. Truth be told I don’t believe my new acquaintance went away any richer for the knowledge, but I believe I did – the whole world is becoming far more ‘fiber-savvy’ and with that comes interest, proliferation and demand.

On the hardware end of this journey, I had the opportunity to discuss the growing spread of fiber optic links not only to the modern “Cloud” in ever growing datacenters and HPC’s, but even to the old fashioned fluffy clouds with fiber in aircraft for entertainments systems and avionics…and even further beyond to the ‘final frontier’ – Space!

OFC 2011 Wrap-Up: Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed and Finisar Blue!

This week’s post is contributed by Finisar guest blogger, Tony Pearson.

Last week took me and approximately 10,000 of my closest colleagues and friends to arguably the largest annual fiber optic components show, the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (OFC/NFOEC) this year in Los Angeles, California.

Pre-show attention this year was focused as much, if not more, on the choice of venue than the anticipation of what’s new and exciting in the industry. The reason was simple, most veterans of OFC who attended when it was last held in L.A. in 2004, have a story of alleged ‘near death’ experiences getting to/from the show floor to hotels, restaurants or parking lots. While there are unconfirmed stories that several would be attendees did not travel to the conference this year for this very reason, the show did appear well attended and all the usual suspects were well represented on the show floor. From my own experience this year, I’d say the show organizers came through on their promise to provide at least a safe location with newer amenities close by. The pre-show fears were thankfully unfounded at least for those of us lodging at the nearby L.A. Live neighborhood. I don’t believe there’s a venue in mainland U.S. that would fully measure up to the San Diego Gaslamp Quarter where we’ve all been spoiled for the last few years.

On the business front this was another busy and successful show for Finisar, beginning with a fantastic booth location, another hit for the Grammys (excuse the pun) at the Finisar Customer event, as well as multiple meetings with customers, suppliers, and partners. This year’s demonstrations in the Finisar booth included Flexgrid™ technology in the WSS, 100GE over 20km using Finisar 25G DFB’s in the pluggable CFP form factor and an 80km link demo in the SFP+ form factor for 10GBase-ZR and SONET/SDH OC-192 protocols. I’d like to extend a personal thanks to all who visited with us and invited us to enjoy the fruits of their labors over the last year and specifically for the show.

There is always some sadness at the end of OFC/NFOEC as we all sit on planes, trains and automobiles headed home, that within our community of Fiber Warriors, there is just never enough time to both discuss all topics in detail nor just socialize a little with those we sometimes only see at trade shows or bump into in lobbies, meeting rooms, standards and MSA meetings. There is often precious little time to walk the floor just to see what everyone’s been working on this year and chosen to share publicly. With the few minutes I managed to set aside to take a look around, I was once again pleased to see an industry focused on the NEW: many demonstrating 25G optical links, 100G offerings in standards based form factors, parallel optics and AOC solutions, the OLD(er): high volume and ever growing small form factors pluggable modules continuing the march upward in bandwidth, and of course in the spirit of innovative collaboration pervasive in our industry, the BORROWED: several booths presenting live demos based on collaborative solutions such as the Agilent/Finisar collaborations at the Agilent booth for both 16x FC and 100G live demos.

With the OFC/NFOEC Registration area sponsored by Finisar this year and a booth location front and center on the trade show floor, this was an industry event filled with Finisar BLUE.

Finisar Booth at OFC 2011

Friendly Finisar Staff at the 100GE CFP module demonstration

Finisar Receives Brocade’s Customer Focus Award

Hello Lightspeed Readers,

The year is flying by and incredibly, we are in the midst of fall with the end of 2010 nearly upon us. If you follow Finisar news, you may have read in our latest press release that we received the 2010 Customer Focus Award from Brocade. I was honored to attend this event with my colleagues and especially humbled to accept this award on behalf of Finisar.

We received this distinction for our deep commitment to customer service and satisfaction, but I’d like to quote some specific words used to describe us by Lisa Loscavio, Vice President of Supply Base Management at Brocade.

This supplier has a deep commitment to Brocade. They drive collaboration at standards committees to ensure that Brocade’s interests are met.

They are unrelenting at providing design support, samples, development resources, failure analysis at component and system levels, and they never give up until we are satisfied with the technical results…

…They have truly exhibited the qualifications necessary to stand out in this category offering extraordinary customer focus.

In this world where every company claims to be “customer focused”, it is nice to be singled out by one of the key customers in this industry as somebody who truly is.

In my experience, I have learned that being customer focused is not about what you do for the customer, but it’s more often about where you draw the line of what you won’t do for the customer. It is very common to be asked for difficult or challenging things from our customers. The challenge in our business is always to find a way to run a high volume manufacturing business while making sure that we are flexible enough to give customers the customizations they need to be successful.

Brocade 2010 Supplier Summit: Group photo of Brocade Management and Finisar Management.

Brocade 2010 Supplier Summit: Mark Willey, Finisar Regional Sales Manager shaking hands with Brocade Management from left to right: Parviz Ghalambor, VP Engineering, Richard Deranleau, CFO, and Michael Klayko, CEO.

Brocade 2010 Supplier Summit: Rafik Ward, Finisar Vice President of Marketing, shaking hands with Brocade Management from left to right: Parviz Ghalambor, VP Engineering, Richard Deranleau, CFO, and Michael Klayko, CEO.