A final major point of differentiation being touted is the future readiness and durability of the 7950 XRS. ALU says that every component of the platform design is modular, from power to cooling to all active components, making the system simple to maintain and upgrade. As to extensibility, ALU says, “The 7950 XRS backplane and optical interconnect are designed to handle slot capacities of 2 Terabits per second, multi-chassis clustering that enables the system to scale up to 240 Terabits per second in the future, as well as support 400GE and 1 Terabit interfaces as they become available.”
Industry validation
In an unusual for such announcements twist, the 7950 XRS family has gotten the public endorsement of Verizon, NTT Communications and BT (News - Alert). As someone with over 35 years of industry experience who has been a part of or evaluated thousands of product launches, I can say that public carrier endorsements of vendor solutions are about as rare as the appearance of Halley’s Comet.
The press release for the launch has the full comments of the above mentioned customers who have been kicking the tires of the 7950 XRS. Below is an abbreviated sample of their statements:
Ihab Tarazi, vice president of Global IP and Transport Planning and Technology, Verizon: “We applaud Alcatel-Lucent for its bold approach to router value and performance.” Fumio Ito, vice president Network Services Technology of NTT Communications (News - Alert): “We are pleased to see innovation from Alcatel-Lucent that brings enhancements to the IP network in terms that might be able to address our operational challenges and costs.” Karl Penaluna, president, BT Global Networks and Systems: “We’ve been using Alcatel-Lucent’s 7750 Service Router for many years as part of the rollout of the 21CN program across the UK...We’ll need platforms for our national and metro core networks that scale to 100Gigabit links and beyond. We’re also constantly seeking to reduce our physical footprint and power per bit, so we’re very encouraged to see Alcatel-Lucent meeting these challenges…”Leading researchers agree with this being an important milestone. An example is the comments from Michael Howard, Principal Analyst & Co-Founder, Infonetics Research (News - Alert), who stated, "Service providers face a serious problem as they tackle 100G, the next great inflection point in their routing, switching and optical networks...Alcatel-Lucent’s new 7950 XRS core router platform appears to address the scaling of core networks without growing both soft and hard operating costs.”
A non-trivial pursuit
The 7950 XRS family of routers are part of Alcatel-Lucent’s vision of the High Leverage Network™ (HLN) which is focused on addressing the exploding demand for broadband capacity and services in a way that eases service providers’ pain and positions them to maximize their opportunities in a cost-effective and environmentally friendly manner. In the context of the HLN vision, the 7950 XRS family is as advertised, a significant milestone not just for ALU but for its competitors and customers as well.
What is being launched, given all of the design criteria for ease of operation, reliability, extensibility, security, and price/performance, can be appreciated for the degree of difficulty involved. Over $3 billion in start-up funding over the past decade did not produce a viable alternative to the existing dominant suppliers. And, as mentioned, it took ALU’s marshalling of all its resources in chipset design, operating systems, IP routing, optical transport, network management, etc., on a team, which has been together for years, to produce not just a single solution but a family that breaks new ground on a variety of fronts.
As I stated at the top, I am very skeptical of announcements positioned as being industry game-changers. However, not just me but key customers and analysts seem to agree the Alcatel-Lucent 7950 XRS is something new and important. In fact, check out the following links for more detailed information and judge for yourself.
Alcatel-Lucent TechZine feature: Building a Core Router for the Next Decade
7950 XRS video on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v
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