Optical Networking 
Back-to-School 2018

It’s that time of year again. Gather up your pencils, slide-rule, and calculator—and get ready to make your network more adaptive. 

Today’s users expect unlimited bandwidth with no additional cost, and these bandwidth demands shift faster than you can say pop quiz. Your network needs to be able to adapt in real time to these unpredictable requirements to offer your customers innovative services. 

Ciena’s comprehensive Optical Network Master Class Series gives the insights you need to understand how a programmable infrastructure enables more efficiency and scale—and how to graduate to the Adaptive Network.

Syllabus:

Coherent Optical Report Card
Professor:  Helen Xenos
Tuesday, October 2, 2018; 11:00am ET

The optical landscape is undergoing many changes with network providers looking to deploy coherent technology across new applications to gain increased capacity, reduce transport costs, and improve competitiveness. It’s been one year since the industry’s first programmable 400G system deployments; we’ll start the session by evaluating the impact of this new technology in deployments to date. Before closing bell rings, you’ll also gain an understanding of the future direction of coherent optical solutions.

Engineering Lab: The Evolution of Transport in Next-gen Networks
Professor:  Paulina Gomez
Thursday, October 4, 2018; 11:00am ET

This class dissects how new technologies—including low-cost interconnect and flexible protocols, like FlexE and FlexO—are driving a more optimized, dynamic end-to-end transport infrastructure for service provider networks. You’ll use your microscope to uncover the market dynamics that are driving new ways of evolving large switching architectures, and to analyze specific sample network simulations showing how a hybrid architecture approach leveraging photonic restoration delivers maximum scale at the right cost.

Field Trip to the Data Center: New Trends You Need to Know
Professor:  Kent Jordan
Tuesday, October 9, 2018; 11:00am ET

Data Center Interconnect (DCI) capacity requirements continue to grow—but what are the new technologies that support growing applications in DCI?  Come on our field trip to learn more about key trends in the interconnect market to help you keep up with demand and increase process automation while improving footprint and power efficiencies. 

Liquid Spectrum™: A Step-by-Step Guide to the Adaptive Network
Professor:  Helen Xenos
Thursday, October 11, 2018, 11:00am ET

Put on your lab coat and get ready to learn how you can take a programmable infrastructure, mix in analytics and SW control, and take tangible steps in enabling a more automated, adaptive network. This advanced class combines learnings from the previous three sessions and provides a step-by-step guide through several closed-loop automation use-cases that help you gain visibility, automate processes, and increase network capacity and service availability from any given WDM investment. Your network will be in a class by itself.

Featured speakers:

    Helen Xenos

    Helen Xenos 
    Helen Xenos is Senior Director of Portfolio Marketing at Ciena. She is responsible for introducing Ciena’s converged packet optical solutions and technologies to market, including Ciena’s industry leading WaveLogic high-capacity coherent DWDM solutions, to both internal and external audiences.

    In Ms. Xenos’ 24 years in the telecommunications industry, she has held a variety of positions that have included product management for the optical and packet optical portfolio, customer program management, systems engineering and manufacturing test engineering. Ms. Xenos joined Ciena from the Nortel Networks' Metro Ethernet Networks (MEN) acquisition.

    Ms. Xenos holds a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Concordia University in Montreal.

    Paulina Gomez

    Paulina Gomez
    Paulina Gomez is currently an Advisor for Portfolio Marketing at Ciena. In this role she works to increase the profile of Ciena’s Converged Packet-Optical solutions and technologies to the market, including Ciena’s WaveLogic Encryption solution, to both internal and external audiences.

    Paulina is fluent in English, French and Spanish, and brings with her a wealth of experience when interacting directly with customers around the world, having spent over 20 years working within the telecommunications industry. Prior to her current role, she worked for Nortel Networks where she held a variety of positions in the optical networking domain including being an Interoperability Brand Engineer that resulted in the establishment of an interoperability brand for Nortel Networks.

    Paulina received a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from McGill University in Montreal with specialization in Telecommunications. While attending McGill, she was a recipient of the prestigious Scarlet Key Award which recognizes exemplary leadership. In her spare time, she is an avid hockey player and marathon runner.

    Kent Jordan

    Kent Jordan
    Kent Jordan is an Advisor of Portfolio Marketing at Ciena.  He is responsible for introducing to the market, Ciena’s compact, modular solutions for high-capacity interconnect applications, including Ciena’s Waveserver family of products.  He has a background of 20 years in the optical telecommunications industry through a variety of positions, including network and architecture planning, business development, and competitive/market intelligence.