Opening It Up at Infinera’s 2022 Global Partner Conference

We just completed Infinera’s 2022 Global Partner Conference, which included a corporate strategy update from the executive team along with an outstanding set of technical breakouts.  We had over 300 attendees representing 80 of our partner companies from around the globe. The conference was held virtually, with plenty of bidirectional communication between Infinera and our partners.

This conference continued Infinera’s open and frank interactions with our partners, demonstrating that they are a true extension of Infinera’s direct sales team.  Full executive commitment to Infinera’s partner program, including participation by several new executives, was on display throughout the conference.  The entire executive management team, including the new additions, presented to the partners.

What happened at the conference?

Nick Walden started things off with a description of our 2021 accomplishments and goals for 2022.  He reminded the team of the investment into partner support being made by Infinera, including the addition of new channel sales leadership to our sales team with Maytry Thianesysavanh in APAC, Kelly Honrobia in the Americas, and Lorraine Twigg in EMEA. Nick also exhorted us to continue to energetically sell our existing and relevant portfolio suite to the evolving market.

A special shout out goes to the announced “Partners of the Year” award winners.  These partners have continuously demonstrated a commitment to product and technology training, deep customer collaboration, and perseverance in order to grow their business.

Americas: NEC, BlueAlly, and Arsitec

EMEA: GE Alstom and SPL

APAC: NEC, SVTECH, and Lintas

We thank them for their efforts and look forward to a prosperous 2022.  Although these specific partners were highlighted during the event, there are many other partners that were worthy of similar recognition, but unfortunately, only a few awards were possible.

There were also two days of breakout presentations where Infinera was able to elaborate on our solutions, roadmaps, and differentiation.  Topics included metro, long-haul, open line systems, automation software, pluggable evolution, and service support for open optical networking.

In the spirit of collaboration, I wanted to help bring recent network wins to life for other partners around the world.  A space in the conference platform was created for the sharing of a series of recent use case wins. I also wanted to present these opportunities in a medium that was different from our typical slides or application notes, so we created a short video for some of the more intriguing wins.  Overviews of three of the exciting and repeatable wins are shared here:

• Revolutionizing Wireless 5G Transport
• Bringing Open Optical to Your Network
• Modernizing Utilities

Revolutionizing Wireless 5G Transport with Auto-Lambda

There is tremendous opportunity to optimize frenetic wireless deployments and upgrades.   PT Lancs, our partner in Indonesia, sees numerous wireless deployments for 3G, 4G, and 5G, where they are connecting multiple cell towers to a router at an aggregation point on a fiber ring.  They have a redundant 10G service to each tower over a single optical ring, with limited space and power at each cell site.  Obviously, some form of WDM would be required.

Instead of using a typical transponder-based system, where a transponder is needed at each cell site, we proposed using Infinera’s Auto-Lambda self-tuning system.  With this system, there is a passive DWDM mux at the aggregation sites, and Auto-Lambda SFPs plug directly into the router at the cell site and self-tune to the correct DWDM channel.

With the Auto-Lambda solution, we were able to halve the rack space used at each cell site, reduced the incremental power at each cell site to zero, and reduced the total equipment cost by 30%.  Additionally, the self-tuning characteristics of Auto-Lambda simplified the process and reduced OpEx costs.

Bringing Open Optical to Your Network

Around the world, many service providers, be they telcos, ICPs, or ISPs, are looking to get the most out of their existing optical line system to meet network growth or footprint expansion.  Arsitec, our partner in Brazil, was working with G8, an ISP that was struggling with both.  G8 deployed one of our latest transponders, the CHM2T, over their existing line system to increase the line rate on existing routes and effectively extend their reach into regions of Brazil that were previously unserved.  With this approach they were able get the most out of their existing line system, reduce costs, and competitively increase their service area.

Modernizing Utilities

We have all been reminded lately that the critical infrastructure provided by utilities is just that – critical!  Many utilities are modernizing their aging SONET/SDH networks that carry mission-critical services like SCADA and protection traffic and need to upgrade these networks to meet additional critical requirements and add non-critical services that would not be possible with SONET/SDH technology and capacity, such as substation automation, asset management, cyber security, access control, and voice and CCTV systems.  Infinera was able to meet the current and future modernization needs of a utility customer with the Infinera 7090 platform.  By moving to MPLS-TP, we were able to maintain the reliability required for the critical infrastructure and move to more modern Ethernet and MPLS technology.

By the end of the conference, both Infinera and the partners were energized by myriad opportunities, and we all look forward to “Opening It Up” in 2022.