Polatis, Quali partner for automated fiber layer management for fiber-optic testing

Optical switch vendor Polatis and "cloud sandbox" software developer Quali (nee QualiSystems) have announced a partnership to combine their expertise to enable integrated and automated fiber layer management. The joint offering, which combines Quali's CloudShell platform and Polatis's portfolio of optical switches, should appeal to infrastructure vendors, data center operators, and network service providers as a way to streamline high-speed equipment, system, and service fiber-optic testing.

The joint offering sees Quali's CloudShell software used to control Polatis's optical switches (see, for example, "Polatis unveils port-reconfigurable all-optical switch") for dynamic reconfiguration of Layer 1 resources. The software platform enables the orchestration necessary to manage higher-layer network elements and other on-net equipment from a single control point, Quali says. It also can manage all of the lab and data center infrastructure: inventory, modelling, provisioning, lab-wide connectivity, resource planning, and reporting. With the aid of the low-latency Polatis optical switches, the combined offering enables operators to share fiber and equipment resources conflict-free across multiple test topologies simultaneously, the partners say.

The pairing already has at least one fan.

"WWT has been working with both Quali and Polatis for a number of years, and both provide the best solution in their respective market segments of lab automation and optical switching," according to Kathi Bomar, WWT technical solutions architect. "Not only will this partnership provide WWT with a tool for our internal labs and technical showcases, but we look forward to helping our networking and data center clients implement the combined solutions utilizing Cisco, Polatis, and Quali. We believe our customers will benefit from the automation of these solutions orchestrated by Quali's CloudShell, as can be seen in WWT's Advanced Technology Center."

The Quali/Polatis combination follows a similar announcement from Calient and Spirent last fall (see "CALIENT, Spirent target optical test lab automation").

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