Israel Credit Cards builds private optical network with Ciena
Ciena Corp. (NASDAQ: CIEN), working with BizConnect Platinum partner Telrad, has won a contract to build a low-latency private optical network for Israel Credit Cards Ltd. (Cal). The private optical network connects Cal’s new data center in Yehud to its main facilities in Giv’atayim.
The metro network uses Ciena’s 4200 Advanced Services Platform to supply two 10-Gbps Ethernet and four 4G Fibre Channel connections between the sites to meet business growth and disaster recovery requirements. In moving its backup site in Rishon LeZion to a new, larger facility in Yehud, Cal needed to quadruple capacity on the 30-km link between the data centers, and decided that the construction of a dedicated network over two leased dark fibers would prove more beneficial than leasing a managed line, Ciena says.
“Our business continuity planning efforts and regulatory compliance requirements, coupled with our constant growth and commitment to offer our customers the best service possible, led to the need to reassess our data center interconnect infrastructure,” explains Avi Polak, head of infrastructure department at Cal, via a Ciena press release. “Two aspects played a central role when selecting our networking partner: future-proof technology and trust. Ciena’s highly resilient, scalable and low-latency network allows Cal to cost-effectively plan for future growth. At the same time, we also know that Ciena’s roadmap will continue to support this platform, since it is ahead of the industry and allows a seamless upgrade to 40G and beyond. Telrad’s ability to meet Cal’s timeline and ongoing support has been equally important.”
The deployment requirements were indeed strict. Ciena and Telrad had the links up in running within two weeks without disrupting Cal’s existing services, asserts the systems house.
The new network has already benefited Cal, Ciena says. For example, the time to complete daily data backups has improved by 75%, and now every transaction can be stored at both sites. This allows Cal to comply with regulatory disaster recovery requirements and uphold its business continuity plan, Ciena says.
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