In our post-pandemic era, dependence on the telecom sector has rapidly increased and become an integral part of our lives, creating more demand for strong networks and better connectivity. As the telecom sector is driven to strengthen critical telecom infrastructure, and we take a look back to a number of significant milestones that DriveNets achieved in 2022, with our sights looking toward continued growth in 2023.
#10 The Network that Got you Here Won’t Get You There
To kick off 2022, DriveNets launched a bold new marketing campaign that positioned the company as an ongoing disruptor and a leader in the evolution to cloud-native networking. With network infrastructure planners looking at open networking for a long time, they have made strides towards making the transition to disaggregated architecture through standard white boxes. With a bold, humorous marketing campaign, DriveNets showed why we are different.
#9 Appearing at Industry events
Moving out of COVID-19 limitations has been, and still is, sluggish and cumbersome. It took a lot of effort to pull together some of this year’s physical events, getting people together to physically interact and socialize, just like in the old days (of 2019…). DriveNets made strong showings across events in North America, Europe and Asia.
#8 Embracing Network Disaggregation
More and more operators are embracing disaggregated, cloud-native architectures as part of their next-generation network deployments, and while there are challenges to overcome, there are commercial, strategic and technological advantages to be gained, as this panel of experts from KDDI, DriveNets, Wipro and the Open Compute Project Foundation explained.
#7 Partnering with Network Industry Leaders
Already working together on global network deployments by Tier-1 Asian operators, EPS Global joined DriveNets Partner Program. DriveNets also announced a partnership with ITOCHU Techno-Solutions to deploy DriveNets Network Cloud solution at Tier-1 service providers in Japan.
#6 Deploying Distributed Disaggregated Chassis (DDC) at Service Providers
Turkcell, a leading fixed and mobile services provider in Turkey, announced that it has successfully deployed a Disaggregated Distributed Backbone Router (DDBR) Internet Gateway solution in its production network, the first such deployment in the Telecom Infra Project (TIP). The DDBR solution, consisting of Drivenets Network Operating System (DNOS) software with UfiSpace and Edgecore Networks hardware, gives Turkcell the capability to scale the solution’s capacity up to 192 Tbps in its Gebze datacenter.
Japan’s KDDI hasn’t been waiting around, either. KDDI has been conducting what it claims are the world’s first commercial tests of a DDBR using technology from DriveNets and Delta powered by Broadcom’s latest Jericho2 chipsets, and says the resulting router has “enough capability to be deployed in KDDI production networks.”
“That’s good news for the likes of DriveNets, Delta, UfiSpace and Broadcom, but not so good for the traditional router vendors such as Cisco, Juniper, Huawei and Nokia, which command the lion’s share of the service provider router market that is worth north of $10 billion each year,” reported Ray Le Maistre.
#5 Contributing to the Evolution of the Open Compute Project DDC standard
Recently, we just submitted version 2 of the Distributed Disaggregated Chassis (DDC) specification and received approval from the OCP incubation committee. The innovation solvesr two key elements of the evolving open networking standard:
- Enabling existing and new software and hardware vendors to easily interoperate with each other, based on standard interfaces, maintaining the open nature of the standard – avoiding vendor lock
- Simplifying the upgrade process, by separating software and firmware upgrades, enabling a well-controlled mix and match of different software/firmware/hardware
#4 Adding Cloud and Networking Industry Veterans to the Leadership Team
DriveNets attracts senior executives from Juniper Networks, Salesforce and Mavenir.
Alan Weckel, Founder and Technology Analyst, 650 Group, who is familiar with both the telecom and cloud markets, commented on the additions: “DriveNets disrupted the networking world by building networks like cloud. Extending its leadership with three top-tier industry veterans will allow it to further evolve its offering, customer engagements and the level of services it provides to its customers. Having industry leaders join a transformative company such as DriveNets is great news for operators and cloud service providers, and an important step for the cloud-native networking market.”
#3 Disrupting the Telco & Cloud Infrastructure Industry with $262M in series C funding
The investment will expand the company’s cloud-native networking portfolio and global operations, changing the way networks are built, operated, and consumed. The funding from this latest round of investment will be used to develop future technology solutions, pursue new business opportunities, and expand the company’s global operations and support teams to support growing customer demand.
“DriveNets has already made a big impact in the high-scale networking industry and its routing solutions are adopted by tier-1 operators for their quality and the innovation they enable,” said Aaron Mankovski, Managing Partner at Pitango. “This investment will allow DriveNets to expand its footprint in the market and develop additional offerings.”
#2 Expanding the Network Cloud ecosystem with leading ZR/ZR+ optics solutions
The introduction of ZR/ZR+ optics demonstrates the value of the open disaggregated router model in accelerating the adoption of cutting-edge technology from multiple vendors. DriveNets Network Cloud is the first DDC/DDBR (Disaggregated Distributed Chassis/Backbone Router) to support ZR/ZR+ optics as native transceivers that can be inserted into any Network Cloud-supported white boxes from leading ODMs such as UfiSpace and Edgecore. Supported transceivers are from Coherent Corp., Acacia, now part of Cisco, Fujitsu Optical Components (FOC), and NEC.
“Disaggregated networking infrastructure, along with Coherent’s open-standard 400G ZR+ QSFP-DD-DCO transceiver, enables service providers to more easily deploy IP-over-DWDM architectures,” said Matthias Berger, Vice President, Coherent Technology, Coherent Corp. “Service providers can eliminate an entire layer of optical equipment and thereby significantly reduce both capital and operational expenditures.”
#1 Winning the Leading Lights Company of the Year Award
Telecom’s prestigious awards program, Leading Lights, recognized DriveNets leadership in transforming service providers networks to a disaggregated cloud architecture. As DriveNets’ CMO, Inbar Lasser-Raab. explained just what makes DriveNets such a great company, “It’s the combination of a bold vision, passionate people, strong execution, and some chutzpah, with the end goal of making our customers successful.”
The accomplishments lined up from 2022 demonstrate the industry’s confidence in us, enabling us to expand and continue to radically change the way networks are built. Bring on 2023!
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