Company drops "optics" from its name and annnounces a broader focus on network planning and management software and services

May 9, 2011

3 Min Read
Cyan Aiming High With Management Play

Can a packet-optical startup become the company that gives network operators the software and service tools to plan and manage massively scalable networks?

Cyan Optics Inc. hopes so. The two-year-old packet-optical equipment vendor, which now prefers the name Cyan Inc., has been moving more deeply into network management software and services lately. On Monday, it's announcing its biggest leap yet: the Cy360 platform and a technology it calls Service Level Aware Networks.

The multilayer approach to managing networks is something that Cyan launched with its Z-series packet-optical products and the companion CyMS in 2009, and enhanced with CyMS Version 2.3 in 2010. Cyan now hopes to prove that its software can be used independently of its optical gear to solve big-time problems it believes network operators will face in having to continually scale their optical platforms and the services that ride over them.

Monday's announcements also include the CyPortal, a Web-based tool that tracks real-time network performance and Ethernet service-level agreements by watching International Telecommunication Union, Standardization Sector (ITU-T) Y.1731 data. Initially, CyPortal only supports gear from Cyan, Overture Networks Inc. and Accedian , but Cyan plans to expand the type of support provided and the number of vendors, says Frank Wiener, vice president of marketing and international sales.

A third component, CyPlan, helps CyPortal customers (guess what) plan and manage the network.

Cyan is offering CyPortal as a standalone product on a software-as-a-service basis. The company already offers smaller network operators a cloud-based Network Operations Center capability. (See Cyan Wants to Help Bridge the Chasm.)

DukeNet, a competitive fiber-optic network operator providing wholesale and enterprise services in the Southeast, is CyPortal's first customer, using the system its network of Overture OSG 24 and OSG 26 network interface devices at 600 wireless towers.

Why this matters
To meet SLA requirements these days, network operators need to plan and characterize their networks across physical and logical layers, and they need to determine the exact performance between nodes or on an end-to-end service basis, Wiener says.

The lofty goals for this set of products include the management of multiple services through one system. Network resources can then be allocated with more of a plan, rather than being handed out discretely to different services.

Eve Griliches, managing partner with ACG Research , thinks Cyan has identified a key problem and has also created some nifty sales tools for operators, such as CyPortal's ability to link to Google Maps.

"Sales guys can understand and see that there is a hospital along that route or a restaurant. There is a lot more information available to help service providers actually increase their revenues," Griliches says.

For more
Cyan's focus on management has been part of what's kept it in the headlines. Here, see for yourself.

  • Cyan Launches Service Level Aware Framework

  • Cyan Wants to Help Bridge the Chasm

  • Cyan Trumps Cisco, AlcaLu in Stimulus Deal

  • Cisco, Cyan Think Beyond the Box

  • Cyan Boosts Management Tools

  • Cyan Intros Heat Maps

  • Cyan Plays God With Optical



— Carol Wilson, Chief Editor, Events, Light Reading

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