Ciena Packs New 10-Gig Punch

The 5160 and 5142 Service Aggregation Switches are aimed at making it more economical for service providers to offer 10-Gig Ethernet services, a rapidly growing category of Ethernet today, says Mike Adams, VP of Product & Technical Marketing at Ciena. The new boxes also target the internal bandwidth needs of large enterprises in datacenters, and they are designed for outdoor deployment so service providers can push more bandwidth closer to their customers and use these switches as aggregation points.

via Ciena Packs New 10-Gig Punch | Light Reading.

By deploying pairs of 5160s in core network locations such as Central Offices, Ritter has been able to have carrier-grade redundancy with dual homing for fiber-optic rings while achieving the same throughput as a much more expensive 10 Gig core switch, he says.

Ciena Still Struggling for Profitability

That trend, naturally, shows up in its full-year numbers. For fiscal 2012, Ciena generated revenues of $1.83 billion, up about 5 percent year-on-year, and a net loss of $144 million. Its full-year non-GAAP loss was 23.5 million, or 24 cents per share, slightly worse than Wall Street had expected.

via Ciena Still Struggling for Profitability – Optical Networking – Telecom News Analysis – Light Reading.

Ciena’s not alone, of course, in feeling the effects of a shrinking optical market. (See Margin Misery for Alcatel-Lucent.)