Top 5 for 2012 and 2013

By Mark Showalter

Sr. Director, Marketing

I will admit that I am a pushover for a headline about Top 10 or Top 5 or Top 3 anything.  A lot of people like the format.  I’m reminded of Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 radio show that would count down the most popular songs of the week.  It is so convenient to have someone else do all the work summarizing and ranking his or her thoughts on a topic.  With a list in hand, the comparisons and conversations begin.  The “Top X” type of list draws a response like, “I hadn’t thought about that!”, “That wouldn’t be on my list”, or “You forgot _____.”  In the spirit of Top 10 lists everywhere this time of year, here is my list of highlights from 2012 and look ahead to 2013.

2012 Highlights

Death of SONET/SDH – The death of SONET has been forecast for many years but in 2012 it finally happened, sort of.  What died is the revenue stream for manufacturers providing SONET/SDH gear to service providers.

Eclipse of 40G optical transport– Much like how 100G Ethernet is eclipsing 40G Ethernet, on the optical side of the network 100G wavelengths are eclipsing 40G waves.  40G was a fine interim solution but the price per bit of 100G waves is now on par with 40G.  This pricing parity will drive most new deployments into the 100G camp rather than the 40G camp.

Availability of the DTN-X – I could be influenced by my employer on this one.  For Infinera, the remarkable journey of the DTN-X platform has certainly been a highlight. We announced the DTN-X in 2011, started shipping in Q2’12, vaulted to #1 market share in 100G waves in Q3’12 and announced that to date 20 customers have placed orders for the DTN-X, including the U.S. Tier-1 operator CenturyLink.

Crowd-sourced fundraising – 2012 saw the likes of Angel List and Kickstarter leveraging the crowd-source model to raise money to accelerate the pace of innovation.

Rise of SDN – Those of us who remember ISDN – the Integrated Services Digital Network – still giggle at the new acronym, but Software Defined Networks seem to be what everyone is talking about here at the end of the year.

Looking Ahead to 2013

100G Adoption – Many optical industry analysts agree that 2013 will be the year the market for 100G takes off.  If history repeats itself and the 10G market is any use as an example, 2013 will mark the beginning of a decade of 100G deployments as 10G is pushed to the edge.

SDN Consolidation – If 2012 was the advent of SDN proliferation, 2013 is most likely to be the year of SDN consolidation.  Actually, with both Cisco and Juniper making acquisitions in this space this month, this call may be too late.

Innovation enabled by (Mobility X Bandwidth) – As smart phones proliferate and mobile data rates increase, new levels of innovation will be enabled by putting amazing amounts of computing horsepower in the hands of everyone, and wirelessly connecting us to the rest of the world.

Digital Media evolves beyond the World Wide Web – As social media grows other technologies languish.  We’ve long seen the demise of the twisted-pair copper based land-line.  Nowadays even mobile text messaging is suffering at the hands of digital media outlets such as Facebook.  Corporate America and the rest of the world took some time to get on board with the World Wide Web.  Everyone is comfortable with web technology today but it’s no longer enough just to have a website.  Customer and stakeholder interaction through digital media is eclipsing the use of the web, and this is likely to accelerate in 2013.

Hey wait –that’s only nine items on a top 10 list!  Where’s the other one?  I’d like to hear from you, what is your predicted highlight for 2013?  Let us know in the comments section.  We look forward to hearing from you!

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