NETWORKS

Ciena, the network specialist, today announced that HSE&DEM, the Republic of Slovenia's largest producer of electricity, has selected Ciena's next-generation optical multiservice switches, optical multiplexers, storage extension platforms and network management systems to interconnect its locations nationwide with a reliable, high-performance Adaptive WAN (wide area network) to deliver IT services used in the production and delivery of electrical energy to customers. After a competitive review process, HSE&DEM chose Ciena's CN 3620 Intelligent Optical Multiservice Switch, CN 2100 Passive Optical Multiplexer, CN 2000 Storage Extension Platform, ON-Center 3600 Management System and ON-Center CN 2000 Manager because of their superior reliability and support for next-generation SDH transport, DWDM optical transport and storage extension capabilities. The production and delivery of electricity to the market is a mission-critical, multi-step process that is monitored and controlled by a variety of IT applications, so the performance and availability of utility telecommunications networks and services are critical. Based on its network requirements, including support for TDM, Ethernet and storage extension services, carrier-grade reliability and the flexibility to add capacity and support new services over time, HSE&DEM recognized Ciena's Adaptive WAN as the superior solution for its demanding utility telecommunications networking environment. Smart Com, a provider of integrated communications and IT management services headquartered in Slovenia, is working closely with Ciena to complete installation and testing of HSE&DEM's next-generation network. Smart Com is a certified reseller of Ciena solutions, offering system implementation as well as high-quality engineering services. "As Slovenia's largest producer of electricity, our customers count on us so we need to count on our network. It is critical that our network infrastructure ensures the highest reliability and service quality to support the production and delivery of electricity to our energy customers," said Ladislav Tomsic, Technical Director and Member of the HSE Board of Directors. "After a careful competitive evaluation, Ciena stood out as providing the best all-around solutions, meeting our requirements for reliability, scalability, performance and next-generation capabilities to deliver future services as needed." Holding Slovenske elektrarne (HSE), Slovenia's largest supplier of electricity, and Dravske elektrarne Maribor (DEM), governing eight hydropower plants under HSE, will deploy Ciena's CN 3620 and CN 2100 metro transport and switching solutions. The CN 3620 Optical Multiservice Switch and the CN 2100 Passive Optical Multiplexer will provide provisioning, multiplexing and transport of TDM and Ethernet/IP-based services over HSE&DEM's optical infrastructure. Together, these Ciena solutions enable HSE&DEM to deliver a wide array of services while maximizing the use of their leased fiber and lowering OPEX costs. HSE&DEM will also deploy Ciena's CN 2000 Storage Extension Platform, a leading storage-over-SONET/SDH and LAN extension solution for connecting data centers across distances and reducing recurring bandwidth charges up to 70 percent through hardware compression and Dynamic Bandwidth Assignment. HSE&DEM is taking advantage of the CN 2000's flexible support for Fibre Channel, ESCON, FICON and Gigabit Ethernet for storage area networking, disaster recovery applications and next-generation SDH transport. Leveraging more than 12 years of engineering Layer 1 and Layer 2 networking platforms for the carrier marketplace, Ciena brings carrier-class expertise to the demanding utility environment with its Adaptive WAN solution, a wide area network that optimizes and switches traffic at the lowest possible layer--providing maximum throughput, low latency and applications transparency. As a network that is always available, never drops packets and delivers deterministic response, the Adaptive WAN moves utilities beyond overlapping, single-application networks to a unified, scalable and high-performance network that supports time-sensitive, mission-critical business processes. "Our partnership with Smart Com is an excellent example of how Ciena is combining our network specialist approach with the customer's processes and market knowledge of local channel partners to enable us to tap into new markets around the world," said Francois Locoh-Donou, vice president, International Sales at Ciena. "Ciena is pleased to be the foundation of HSE&DEM's flexible, application-focused Adaptive WAN architecture, one of many enterprises using Ciena's broad array of infrastructure solutions to deliver next-generation services from any point on the network."