The optical networking industry is on the edge of revolutionary change, and while it may sound trite to talk about “the network of the future,” this is what’s approaching in a very real and immediate sense.
Two long-term market trends—industry consolidation and the convergence of IT and networking—have propelled the industry to its first major inflection point in decades. Two technological trends—the software revolution and the disaggregation phenomenon— are taking us forward.
Of these trends, disaggregation is the key to open, agile, plug-and-play networking as we will know it in five years’ time. This is because before we can progress, we have to separate the individual functions and capabilities that comprise today’s tightly integrated hardware systems. Disaggregation is, therefore, not just the latest buzzword. It’s a prerequisite that must be met before we can form an ecosystem of new industry partnerships, and collaborate to rebuild and improve those componentized functions—and add the automation and intelligence that the market’s clamoring to buy.
Fujitsu is shifting the architectural design of its optical networking platforms away from complex, vertically integrated hardware-based structures into a disaggregated architecture. This change will give rise to re-aggregation in the form of economical, generic hardware elements, open-standards software frameworks, and interoperable functional modules. We call this “componentization.”
Once disaggregation has happened, we can drive fast implementation times, simpler development cycles, lower costs, and an overall climate of unprecedented innovation, collaboration, and opportunity not just for the industry itself, but for our customers and their customers as well.
Innovation, collaboration and opportunity—the broad benefits resulting from the disaggregation journey—all grow best in an open, nonproprietary climate. They thrive when the overall environment is flexible, partnership-oriented and fast-paced. And while we’re aware of and prepared for the inevitable transition period of backwards compatibility, we’re committed to taking the first bold steps down the road to disaggregation in fall 2015. It’s an exciting time to be at Fujitsu, an exciting time to be in the optical networking business, and it’s going to get more and more interesting from here.