Ciena platform receives IBM certification

New Delhi — Ciena Corporation, the network specialist, has announced the successful completion of interoperability testing and qualification of its ONLINE Metro Multiservice DWDM Platform for IBM GDPS eServer zSeries mainframe environments. IBM's validation of ONLINE Metro was based upon the successful completion of test scenarios on IBM zSeries mainframes deemed vital to GDPS operation.

GDPS is among the world's most advanced computing environments, providing a set of disaster recovery and continuous availability solutions ideal for large multi-site enterprises. The combination of IBM's GDPS technology with Ciena's metro optical DWDM systems connects local storage and server networks that are separated by distances of up to 300 kilometers for high-availability business continuity and disaster recovery applications. Either as part of a managed offering from a service provider or for a private enterprise network, this combination may offer a proven and economical means to connect disparate offices and islands of mission-critical information and increase data recovery speed in the wake of a disaster.

"Our GDPS solutions address the key factors that impact business continuity and regulatory compliance: availability, time to restart systems after a disaster, data protection and distance between primary and backup systems," said Casimer DeCusatis, Distinguished Engineer, IBM Systems and Technology Group. "Paired with Ciena's metro WDM solutions, GDPS users are able to extend powerful business continuity functionality over significant distance, regardless of bandwidth requirements."

Analyst firm IDC forecasts that metro WDM revenue will increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.2 percent to reach $1.4 billion by the end of 2008. "Driving growth will be Ethernet over metro WDM applications and storage area network (SAN) extension over metro WDM applications," noted Sterling Perrin, manager, Optical Networks, IDC.

"The need for on-demand, service-selectable networks is growing, furthering the need for a scalable transport and aggregation solution that ensures continuous data availability. Qualification and interoperability with GDPS brings the performance, reliability and storage extension benefits of our proven WDM platform to the vast community of IBM enterprise users," said Rob Adams, vice president of product management, Ciena. "We're proud to have achieved another milestone with IBM, and will continue to work with them in driving evolution and standardization activities across our enterprise-applicable platforms."

Ciena adds the GDPS certification of ONLINE Metro to its existing series of IBM certifications for the CN 2000 Storage Extension Platform, a leading storage-over-SONET/SDH solution.

Ciena's GDPS-certified solution has been selected by a $60 billion life insurance company to enable the connection of data centers across 100 kilometers of fiber for the transport of GDPS and other data center applications.