Ciena’s acquisition of DonRiver is a positive development for the telco software market. It has the potential to accelerate legacy network transformation and to enable hybrid physical/software network operational coexistence.
Combining DonRiver’s OSS federation capability and Ciena’s Blue Planet orchestration promise a strong management platform for the transformation of legacy networks and the enabling of hybrid networks. With the DonRiver acquisition Ciena have the key parts to enable this network transformation.
Practical OSS transformation
DonRiver has built up an impressive list of worldwide clients where they have enabled transformation and consolidation of fragmented legacy OSS environments, enabling operational efficiency and automation. DonRiver’s strength is its strong OSS domain knowledge and long term experience of OSS transformation projects. DonRiver’s Fusion product has been built based on this practical knowledge. DonRiver have also built a delivery methodology that avoids traditional “Big Bang” transformation favouring evolution and DevOps style iterative delivery of business benefit.
Ciena scale
DonRiver brings Ciena a strong consultancy and implementation team with knowledge of practical OSS transformation and the reality of achieving this in real CSP operational environments. Ciena’s scale will enable these strengths to be more widely known building stronger credibility for transformation of existing OSS and practical roll out of hybrid networks.
The acquisition also supports Ciena’s core network business providing an environment in which the legacy network and its services can successfully be upgraded and replaced. Replacing large segments of existing network is an inventory challenge and opportunity.
Ciena and DonRiver are already demonstrating this type of OSS transformation with the successful introduction of a hybrid network at a major Australian CSP, described in Appledore’s recent case study.
Appledore have published a whitepaper that looks at the capabilities of DonRiver Fusion and maps them to Appledore’s research taxonomy and a market outlook on the future need for dynamic inventory.