On the road to DCI transformation

Sophie Legault was at BCE discussing recent trends on the data center interconnect (DCI) market. Chief among them: the need for more bandwidth and the deployment challenges this entails. According to Sophie, the next 12-18 months will be characterized by a very strong demand for greater bandwidth deployments—ranging from 200, 400 and even up to 600 gigabytes. Thus, the new optical transceivers, such as QSFP28, and the new rates are what’s driving the technological changes currently shaping the DCI transformation. Sophie goes on to say that some of the key testing challenges during DCI network deployment will pertain to testing the full bandwidth, while monitoring latency and quality of service (QoS). Meanwhile, leaner webscale companies, seeking to deliver their services in a more automated and remote manner, also present considerable testing, monitoring and maintenance challenges for the network.

To meet these challenges and ever-growing bandwidth needs, EXFO is working together with customers to provide the tools for lab testing the new technology as well as portable field equipment that enables remote, and very efficient and more cost-effective, network testing and deployment. In addition, EXFO’s real-time analytics solution makes it possible to pool all the collected test data and KPIs so that they can subsequently be analyzed, thereby providing customers with real-time insight into their networks. For the full interview, click here.