Business

GMPLS is key to creating new optical control plane standards, says new Yankee Group survey

April 8, 2002

April 8, 2002--In 2002, it's all about profit; service providers must increase their margins by reducing operational expenditure (opex) and increase their revenue streams by introducing new services into the market before their competitors.

In 2002, it's all about profit; service providers must increase their margins by reducing operational expenditure (opex) and increase their revenue streams by introducing new services into the market before their competitors. By simplifying their networks with standards-based technology, service providers can achieve faster provisioning times, faster network restoration, improved traffic engineering, and lower administrative overhead, reveals new research from Boston-based analyst firm The Yankee Group.

The challenge for vendors is to demonstrate the business case. How will standards developments enable the service providers to turn a profit?

"The need to develop a common optical control plane to address standard signaling and routing is clearly there," contends Marian Stasney, senior analyst in the Communications Network Infrastructure research and consulting practice at the Yankee Group. "The introduction of agility into optical networks reduces opex and brings revenue-producing services online much faster," she adds.

According to the report, the top three drivers for a common optical control plane are:

* Faster provisioning, which brings in revenue more quickly over the existing infrastructure.

* The ability to introduce new services like optical virtual private networks (O-VPNs) for additional sources of revenue.

* The need to dramatically reduce costs.

The Yankee Group believes the market will begin to see pre-standards-based products from vendors as early as the second quarter of 2002. Deployment will begin in core transport network elements, but edge devices will be taking advantage of standards properties in tandem, resulting in the ultimate end goal of an intelligent optical network by 2010, claim analysts.

Now in its fourth decade, the Yankee Group is headquartered in Boston and maintains offices throughout North America, Europe, Latin America, and the Pacific Rim. For more information, visit the company's Web site at www.yankeegroup.com.