NEW YORK -- Ethernet Expo Americas 2011 -- Cyan Inc. is introducing multivendor metro Ethernet, a long-awaited step that could help operators better adhere to service-level agreements (SLAs).

Cyan is making its announcement Monday and will show off the technology Tuesday and Wednesday at Light Reading's Ethernet Expo in New York.

A multivendor layout would let operators use Cyan's CyMS management software and CyPortal interface to track a service's performance as it passes through other vendors' gear. Operators can also set up protection paths on Ethernet rings (the International Telecommunication Union, Standardization Sector (ITU-T) G.8032 type) built of certain other vendors' gear.

The catch is that Cyan's multivendor view only works with gear from Cyan's partners: Accedian Networks Inc., Overture Networks Inc. and Telco Systems (BATM) -- and a couple of competitor boxes that Cyan isn't mentioning publicly.

Cyan can't provision a service across partners' equipment yet, although that function is coming, says Frank Wiener, Cyan's vice president of marketing.

Why this matters
We've been asking Cyan about multivendor management for a couple of years now, and it's finally coming to life.

True, Cyan covers a limited swath of the network. But that can be useful in cases such as Ethernet rings. Typcially, a partner's box sits at an aggregation point and hands Cyan an Ethernet uplink. The multivendor management capabilities would let the operator see, from one screen, what's happening throughout that ring and that uplink point.

The operator could also replace those two boxes with just Cyan's. That might seem like a minus for Cyan's partners, but they're trading off that network spot in order to offer a cheaper and potentially more manageable Ethernet ring, which becomes an easier sale, Wiener says. "They might have 10 nodes on a ring, and one goes away. But they could get more design wins."

For more
Here's the thread we've followed on Cyan and its converged capabilities. Note that Cisco Systems Inc. was talking about doing this stuff, too.

• Cyan Counts Latency
• Cyan Aiming High With Management Play
• Cyan Wants to Help Bridge the Chasm
• Cisco, Cyan Think Beyond the Box

— Craig Matsumoto, West Coast Editor, Light Reading