ADVA Revenues Up, Eyes Data Center Prize
ADVA has become the latest optical networking vendor to report robust earnings and talk a bullish game about the near-term future of the sector.
Germany-based ADVA Optical Networking in 2014 posted the best full-year revenue in the company's history -- 339.2 million Euros (US$380 million), as well as 86.7 million Euros (US$97 million) for the fourth quarter of 2014. Like its optical vendor brethren, including Infinera and Cyan, ADVA cited increased optical investment by Web 2.0 firms as one of the several reasons for its quarterly and full-year growth, said ADVA CEO Brian Protiva, on the company's earnings call Thursday. (See ADVA Reports Record Full-Year Revenue.)
"A stabilizing European market, a strong Internet content provider and ISP market in North America, growth prospects in the Carrier Ethernet segment and further consolidation in the telco equipment landscape all support further growth in our broader industry," Protiva said.
Also, cloud and mobility traffic explosions and the investments necessary to manage them are raising the requirement for optical layer technology to be deployed where it traditionally hasn't been. "Data centers are the new cornerstones of networked societies," Protiva said. "Connecting data centers on a regional or metro scale is where the investment action and enthusiasm will be in the coming year."
Protiva claimed that ADVA is well positioned to handle both the high-speed connectivity and low latency needs of private enterprise data centers and the metro-centric service requirements of public carrier data center infrastructure. The vendor's revenue breakdown is trending toward 60% coming from carriers and 40% from enterprise.
Protiva also highlighted a recent management move: ADVA last month named company veteran Ulrich Dopfer as its new CFO. Protiva added that ADVA will continue with a management structure in which CTO Christoph Glingener leads daily company operations -- the traditional role of a COO -- while Protiva himself leads all sales and marketing efforts. Dopfer concluded the call by offering second quarter guidance for ADVA of revenue to fall in the range of 90 million to 95 million Euros (Roughly US$100.5 to US$106.5 million).
(See ADVA Appoints New CFO.)— Dan O'Shea, Managing Editor, Light Reading
