Q&A: Cisco's Carl Russo on discontinuation of ONS 15900 router
Cisco announced on April 4 that it is discontinuing the ONS 15900 Wavelength Router. Carl Russo, Group Vice President of Optical Networking, discusses Cisco's optical strategy in this Q&A.
For more information on Cisco's optical strategy, go to http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/779/servpro/solutions/optical/.
Q. Why did Cisco feel the need to close down the wavelength router product?
A.
It's a tough decision, but the bottom line is that in the current economic environment, Cisco is focusing on business areas that provide immediate revenue growth. We fundamentally believe the future of service provider core networks is a meshed architecture, but service providers are not ready to deploy products like the ONS 15900 as rapidly as we originally anticipated.The Cisco ONS 15900 Wavelength Router is tremendous technology. Our customers recognize the value of re-architecting networks to implement wavelength routing capabilities. But given the economic slowdown, they aren't in a position to undertake significant changes in the core.
Instead, our customers are focusing on incrementally enhancing their core networks with such technologies as dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) and building out their metropolitan optical networks to bring more customers onto IP networks. Our decision was not based upon any shortcomings with the ONS 15900 product but rather on current trends we saw among our customers.
By discontinuing the ONS 15900 we can devote resources to the DWDM core and metro optical space to enhance current offerings with features and capabilities that will enable our customers to be successful.
Q. How does this affect Cisco's IP+optical strategy?
A.
Cisco's IP+optical strategy continues to focus on the marriage of intelligence of IP and the high capacity of optics. We have a tremendous group of talented engineers in the optical space and have created a terrific product. It's a refocusing of our efforts around markets that are growing quickly. Other than that, our strategy has not changed.We deliver IP+Optical technology to enable service providers to offer profitable services to their customers. We are experiencing very healthy growth in both our existing core and metro optical lines as well as in our market-leading Internet routing products.
Q. How does this fit into Cisco's recent announcement to reduce its expenses?
A.
When we made that announcement, Cisco indicated it would review its business areas and focus on markets and products that deliver immediate return. This decision is part of that process. We believe it's prudent in uncertain economic times to apply resources to markets where we have solid revenue growth.There are approximately 200 employees working on development of the ONS 15900 and we are currently evaluating how to re-deploy some of that talent and potentially reduce some of the Cisco workforce.
Q. The ONS 15900 Wavelength Router started at Cisco from the Monterey acquisition. Was that acquisition a risk?
A.
By their very nature every acquisition is a risk. But risk taking is part of Cisco's culture. We take risks, most work out very well. At Cisco, we believe it is much better to go 8 for 10 than 5 for 5. If you're going 5 for 5, at Cisco that means you probably aren't taking enough risks.We have acquired a number of other optical technologies that have done very well and form the foundation of our momentum in that market. While we are disappointed that the current economic environment required us to make this decision on the ONS 15900 Wavelength Router, we are proud of the developers who created the technology and their many contributions. .
Q. What did the ONS 15900 Wavelength Router do?
A.
Fundamentally, service providers are facing a challenge of needing to grow their networks and streamline operations. The ONS 15900 Wavelength Router enabled service providers to efficiently provision bandwidth and move great amounts of information-data, voice, video-through the core of service provider networks.The product essentially routed at the transport layer, literally routing wavelengths of light, much the way our IP routers move packets. As mentioned earlier, we still believe that service providers will follow a meshed strategy. But under the current conditions, it is difficult for many of our customers to make such a dramatic change in architecture.
Q. How will customers be affected?
A.
We are working with the customers who were testing the ONS 15900 Wavelength Router to meet their needs with our portfolio of IP+Optical solutions. Cisco is well known for working closely with customers and this is no exception.
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