Sorrento Networks provides metro optical access solutions, offering an edge-to-regional CWDM, DWDM and ROADM (News - Alert) product portfolio to carriers and enterprises worldwide. Sorrento’s GigaMux and GigaEdge optical transport products are designed to efficiently add bandwidth to clients’ networks and transport mission-critical services and applications across the network infrastructure. Recently the company unveiled an upgraded release of its WDM management capabilities with version 1.5 of its GigaMux 6400 Management System. The 1.5 release enables customers to better monitor and manipulate their networks by adding nodes and wavelengths.

 

Jim Nevelle, the company’s CEO is scheduled to present a session on IPTV (News - Alert) & Triple Play Network Migration at the upcoming ITEXPO in Miami Beach, FL in February 2009. Nevelle was kind enough to answer some questions about Sorrento and about his session content. Oh, and one more thing: Go Huskies!

 

JN: Above all, I want attendees to leave with the knowledge and tools they need to implement lower-cost IPTV architectures. The bandwidth requirements for IPTV are much greater than for carrier-class VoIP telephony, necessitating the need for more bandwidth-efficient IPTV protocols, such as IP multicasting. However, finance departments often balk at the high costs of obtaining this bandwidth efficiency. My goal with this presentation is to teach attendees ways to implement a low-cost broadcast optical IPTV backbone that offers a high QoS and meets all other triple play requirements. It should be timely from both a technological and economical point of view.

 

JN: 2008 was an excellent year for Sorrento Networks. Luckily for us, the metro optical WDM business is continuing to experience strong and increasing demand for more bandwidth and applications. Even in this challenging economic year, the need for bandwidth continues to grow driven by applications such as overall commercial Internet usage (e-mail, video conferencing, etc.), consumer video demands (VOD, HD channels, etc.), and storage-area networks (file backups, regulatory compliance files, etc). Over the course of 2008, we helped our customers remain competitive and cost-effective, expanded our partner relationships around the globe, and introduced new products to stay a step ahead of the technological curve. We are busy planning an aggressive strategy to continue our growth and success in 2009.

 

JN: Sorrento’s biggest achievement in 2008 was a very smooth and successful separation from Zhone Technologies (News - Alert). Sorrento was originally acquired by Zhone in 2004, but Zhone later decided to focus on its triple play platform and move away from the WDM optical space, which was Sorrento’s core focus. We resurrected Sorrento as a standalone, private entity and hit the ground running in January 2008. We have been extremely satisfied with our performance and what we’ve been able to achieve over the course of one year. Our crowning achievement was maintaining happy customers amidst the spin-off, many of whom are expanding their business with us and standardizing on our platforms.

 

JN: Over the next twelve months, Sorrento will be laser focused on increasing Ethernet capabilities and functionality in the metro WDM market. We are releasing our Optical Ethernet Transport (OET) card in early 1Q09, which will enable carriers to increase the amount of Gigabit Ethernet circuits and fully utilize their wavelength bandwidth potential. Additionally, we are offering full suite of multiple port 2.5Gand 10G cards that can enable numerous services for the price of what a single service costs today.

 

JN: The Obama Administration vowed to invest in public broadband infrastructure, which is, of course, a positive move for the communications industry. Broadband infrastructure enables more than just more e-mail, it increases the ability to gather information, share ideas, and provide access to the whole world from your office, home or school. As a parent, I want my children to have access to the information superhighway that broadband infrastructure provides. As the access to communications becomes more universal, the benefits resulting from more communications will also be greater.

 

MH: IP is being incorporated into every facet of today’s communications. From voice to video to data (of course) services, IP is proving to be a very stable and user-friendly element of communications. With IP, we can now integrate multiple services into a shared medium, fulfilling the dream ISDN began years ago. We will see a much simpler architecture for all of our communication needs thanks to IP. However, we will also see more IP management capabilities materialize to ensure service level agreements remain intact and valid.

 

JN: Sorrento’s customers are mostly telecom service providers, so they require infrastructure to provide services to their customers and remain competitive. While the current market conditions are undoubtedly forcing everyone to review their financial plans and to scrutinize expenditures, the carriers realize that if they fail to continue to increase/improve their networks’ capabilities to attract new customers, their competitors will. Hence, a return on investment modeling will become a very important part of their purchasing decisions. Those vendors that can assist them with their ROI will be successful.

 

JN: Sorrento has a solid reputation in the WDM market for being cost efficient, reliable and versatile. Our GigaMux product family enables a carrier to “pay as you grow” by providing an expandable infrastructure from day one at a low price, while allowing for incremental growth when they need it. But, this model only works if carriers have faith in your product, and we believe that Sorrento has validated this faith time and time again. And, as always, carriers’ crystal balls sometimes are not as clear as they hope, so to have a platform that has the necessary interfaces to meet customers’ demands, such as gage, Fibre Channel, OC-n, etc., saves them from having to deploy a multiple box solution.

 

JN: Besides the University of Washington Football team (0-12 in 2008) having a winning season, my 2009 bold prediction is that WDM optical equipment revenue will surpass SONET/SDH equipment revenue by two fold. The trend is tracking even today, but the market is at a tipping point where the carriers are going to move away from SONET/SDH and focus their spending on WDM to increase their bandwidth infrastructure.