Network Tools departs Finisar

In our industry, M&A announcements seem to be the most interesting news of the day. Finisar is certainly no stranger in this arena. We have had 17 acquisitions over the past decade. In some ways, it was the technology acquired through these transactions that has helped us to become the world’s largest supplier of optical communications components.

You may have heard that last week Finisar announced the sale of our Network Tools (NT) business to JDSU. For those of you how know us primarily for our optics products, I’d like to give a brief history of our Network Tools business.

It was started in the early 90’s as an internal development effort to avoid buying expensive test equipment for building 1 Gbps optic modules for Fibre Channel. Later, it went on to become a leader in products like the Xgig, the storage industry’s number one protocol analyzer and data generator platform. During our last fiscal year, Network Tools achieved $44.2M in revenue, but while profitable, contributed less than 10% of our total revenues. This division had a different business model than our optics business with higher gross margins and higher operating expenses but slower growth. As every industry sector generally trends toward consolidation, it was logical for this division to be part of a larger operation.

While this business contributed less than 10% of our total revenues, we are very proud of the accomplishments of the NT team. We wish them much success in their new home.

The ultimate benefit to Finisar is that we remain focused on our core business of delivering the best optical communications products in the industry where our transceiver/transponder business is number one in market share.

Please feel free to share your thoughts on this topic in the comments below.

Welcome

Welcome to Lightspeed, Finisar’s new blog for the optical communications industry.

My name is Rafik Ward and I’m honored and humbled to serve as the host of this blog. Over time, I will attempt to bring you the inside scoop of what is happening at Finisar. There are always many exciting things going on, many of which may or may not be otherwise communicated as widely to our customers and industry peers. Hopefully this blog will bring some of these exciting conversations, ideas, significant accomplishments and industry milestones to light. For my own sake, since this is a corporate blog, I will try to do this in a way that doesn’t get me fired!

Throughout the course of this blog, I also plan to share little-known details about Finisar’s history with our readers. This is the story of a company founded without any venture capital. A company born from a tiny office in Menlo Park, California that would grow to become the largest optical components vendor in the world.

Now a little about myself: I have been with Finisar for over 6 exciting years. There has never been a dull moment. I have held a variety of progressive roles, including Product Marketing, Product Management, Director of Marketing and now VP of Marketing. I am excited about technology, but I am even more excited about the customers, markets and products which will make the future a reality.

Welcome.