Lightwave Ranks Finisar Top of Mind as a Leading Transceiver/Transponder Supplier

It was mentioned to me recently that Lightwave announced the results of their 2010 Transceiver/Transponder Buyer Survey.  The survey respondents included technology developers, carriers and end users involved in key purchasing decisions for optical transceivers and transponders.  I was pleased to learn that Lightwave proclaimed Finisar as the ‘brand recognition champion’ as we ranked first in unaided recall of module suppliers by respondents involved in the product development arena  – a title that we are honored and humbled to receive particularly during this extraordinary time in our industry.  

We’re proud to be supplying your company with transceivers/transponders, and we appreciate the recognition. Thanks to all who responded to the survey and naming us the best-known company.

Finisar Named Public Company of the Year

This week’s blog post comes from Tony Pearson, Finisar’s Senior Director of Product Marketing.

It seems that the honour and pleasure of writing blog posts for award ceremonies in cosmopolitan locations falls to me once again. This time I had the good fortune to join Mark Colyar, Finisar’s Sr. VP and GM of the Horsham PA site at Light Reading’s 6th Annual “Leading Lights” Awards dinner and ceremony in downtown Manhattan, New York City. I don’t need to comment on what an incredible venue Manhattan is, but I will say that it didn’t disappoint.

Finisar was nominated for one of several awards presented during the evening, specifically “Public Company of the Year”. Other nominees in this category included Apple and Cisco, so it was indeed an honour to not only be nominated but to win the award!

The evening was a well attended occasion with a broad mix of representatives from multiple walks of the high-tech world. There were representatives from software and hardware companies as well as carriers and IDC’s. The event began with a cocktail reception in the lavishly appointed (if perhaps a little overly decorated in a style somewhat reminiscent of a 70’s high-end disco) bar/lounge area of Hudson Terrace on 46th Street in Manhattan, followed by a dinner and awards ceremony in the terrace dining area, presenting great views of one of the worlds “most viewed” skylines.

The Light Reading team provided both entertainment and accolades to their guests and even included a humorous twist on a “Hall of Shame” for some of the more infamous ‘contributors’ to the Communications Industry.

In keeping with the tone of the rest of the event, the evening closed with coffee, dessert, and cigars and another opportunity to meet a cross-section of the diverse group of attendees. The Light Reading team would certainly receive my vote for “most excellent host of the year” were there such a category. In all, the event was both personally a pleasurable experience – good food, good wine, great location and good company (pun intended), coupled with the honour of winning the last award of the evening, somewhat akin to “Best Movie” at the other annual award ceremony of note.

On hand to receive Finisar’s award for Public Company of the Year were (left to right) Mark Colyar, Senior VP and GM of Horsham and Tony Pearson, Senior Director of Product Marketing.

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.

Finisar is a Leading Lights Finalist (Public Company of the Year)

During ECOC last week, I was pleased to receive the message that Finisar has been selected as a Leading Lights 2010 Finalist by Light Reading. The category we have been nominated in is ‘Company of the Year (Public)’ which is described as follows:

Awarded to the publicly listed firm that stands out among its competitors, innovates constantly, makes investors proud, and makes employees happy.

I would like to extend warm congratulations to every company that has been named a Leading Light’s Finalist in this category. If you have seen the complete list of nominees, you will see that Finisar is in great company.

A Trip to China and A Top500 Award for Quadwire

This week’s Lightspeed post comes from guest blogger Tony Pearson, Finisar’s Director of Product Marketing.

A “lightspeed” visit to China! It was a short journey of only 3 days, with two halves and a tale of two cities, separated by a virtual “Great Wall”. The first half: a visit to Shanghai, both the city and one of the jewels in the Finisar homegrown facility treasury. The second: to Tianjin (approx. 150km from Beijing) to visit Dawning Information Industry Company Ltd. and their Nebulae Supercomputer installation. The virtual “Great Wall” I refer to was simply the barrier thrown up by Mother Nature to domestic flight schedules – during rainy season in Beijing we are reminded that no matter how fast our communication solutions become…she’s still the boss! I’ll focus on two halves and the cities for this post, but I’m always happy to recount my travel stories to the interested in a future blog post.

Let me begin with an event that I was honored to attend at the Dawning manufacturing facility in June for those companies, including Finisar, who helped enable the world’s #2 supercomputer “Nebulae” as ranked by the 35th edition of the Top 500 supercomputer list. The event celebrated a milestone for Dawning as the #1 Supercomputer solution vendor in China and #2 in the world in terms of performance as ranked by the Top 500. Dawning further honored Finisar with a commemorative award for participation in Nebulae.

The Nebulae Supercomputer was at the center of the celebration with the event including a tour of Nebulae itself. The exciting thing for me, personally, was to see a supercomputer with over 120 server racks connected using Quadwire™ Active Optical Cables. This excitement only perhaps topped by the fact that these cables were designed and manufactured by Finisar at the very facility I visited the previous day.

Although not my first visit to China, this was my first visit to Shanghai and the Finisar Shanghai R&D and Manufacturing facility. Shanghai is truly a city in the fast lane, quite literally with some of the best kept and most functional highways I’ve seen in the world. With all eyes currently on the World Expo site located on the Huang Pu River running through the heart of downtown, this is a city in the same mold as Singapore, New York, London or Hong Kong, in my opinion, with a very cosmopolitan feel and population. With an infectious air of both maturity and optimism, this is a city that makes you want to keep coming back. The same is true of the Finisar Shanghai team and site in its newer location with a mix of both locally and globally educated talent, with a vast wealth of experience in the fiber optics business.

While this trip was focused on the high tech: high tech cities, high tech facilities, high tech computer solutions and high tech fiber optics, the real story here for me was about two Laws of Nature: “Bandwidth x Distance” limits combined with our relentless need for more information, pushing fiber solutions over longer distances now to our homes and to the Supercomputer in its most recent incarnation. And, then of course Mother Nature, who stamped her laws on my ability to move around China if not the data in the highly controlled environment of the Nebulae Supercomputer installation.

Finisar’s Tony Pearson (left) visits Dawning for a tour of the Nebulae – the World’s #2 Supercomputer as ranked by the 35th edition of the Top 500 supercomputer list.