Fujitsu has announced the development of the FUJITSU Network 1FINITY platform, a new global category of network equipment spanning access, packet optical, and wireless technologies. The platform will consist of four functional families, providing lambda, transport, switch, and access capabilities.

1FINITY will use blade-based technology more closely resembling servers than the enormous chassis still used in CO’s today.  This brings higher density and supports pay-as-you-grow capability, and lower first cost. The blades are built using 1RU blade-centric architecture, space is used more efficiently when rack mounting, eliminating wasted space.  Blades could be used individually in disaggregated operations.

With the current industry emphasis on developing SDN multivendor management in the telecommunications industry, it is now possible disaggregate hardware elements from currently discrete systems.  The 1FINITY platform enables quick construction of network environments while keeping upfront investment costs in check by using the disaggregated architecture with independent blade modules for each function.

Fujitsu first release of the 1FINITY platform will be the 1FINITY T100 blade, a high-capacity and power efficient entry model designed specifically for datacenter interconnects. It is a transponder with up to four 200G line-side interfaces and potential for up to eight 100G client interfaces. Customer field trials of the 1FINITY T100 blade are said to be in progress with customers in North America. 1FINITY is slated to begin rolling out in North America beginning in December, followed by a phased worldwide rollout.

Fujitsu stated that they intend to keep 1FINITY backward compatible with their current FLASHWAVE family of optical products.  In addition to telecommunications customers, Fujitsu will offer this product to datacenter operators and a wide range of other customers.

1FINITY’s goal of SDN-enabled family of disaggregated products are laudable, even visionary.  There will be much engineering required to deliver the the products to which they aspire.

To see details on Fujitsu’s announcement, refer to: http://www.fujitsu.com/global/about/resources/news/press-releases/2015/0818-01.html