Amit Malik, Vice President and Sales Leader, Ciena India
India’s 5G ecosystem is set for significant growth, driven by the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) despite monetisation challenges. Amit Malik, Vice President and Sales Leader, Ciena India, discusses how AI is becoming a game changer in the telecom industry. He also highlights the company’s recent and upcoming innovations…
What is next for India’s 5G revolution?
While India boasts the fastest 5G roll-out in the world, monetisation continues to be a work in progress. Further, while fixed wireless access has changed the game, bigger changes will come with the advent of AI.
How does Ciena’s adaptive network vision align with India’s 5G revolution?
Charles Darwin once said, “It is not the strongest of the species that will survive, nor the most intelligent, but the most adaptive to change.” I believe that theory is pertinent to today’s networks, which need to be not just fast, resilient and secure, but also very agile and adaptive. One of the most challenging aspects of building or planning a network is the unpredictability in traffic patterns, and an adaptive network can address these challenges. Ciena is at the forefront of driving these adaptive networks. Our solutions are highly automated with built-in elements of AI that help in better planning, optimisation, delivery and predictive maintenance for our customers.
How is Ciena leveraging AI and automation to enhance network performance and reliability?
We have elements of AI already in our operations. We are continuously working on helping our customers predict their problems much earlier than they actually occur, and plan and optimise networks more swiftly.
Network planning becomes even more complex when it comes to submarine cables as it is difficult to put up firewalls in the current geopolitical situation. Ciena is the first to launch a 1.6 Tbps coherent optic solution.
Sustainability is another key element. Our latest generation product is not only twice as fast, it also only consumes half the amount of power per bit and requires half the amount of space.
How are cloud and edge computing influencing network architecture and its design?
The design criteria for the cloud are changing significantly with the emergence of AI cloud, wherein the cloud must be purpose-built for AI. When the concept of AI was introduced, it was perceived as highly data centric. Over time, as information started flowing between data centres, it was acknowledged that inference data will exist at the edge as well. Therefore, the entire connectivity piece has to be designed differently.
How would you describe the future of networks and what is the role that Ciena is expected to play?
Ciena is helping our service provider customers co-ideate, plan and optimise their networks. This is not just a physical activity, but requires the development of smarter automation tools, and that is where we are trying to upgrade our automation solutions with more elements of AI. In addition, we are proponents of sustainability, and are helping our customers meet their sustainability goals by guiding them in replacing older-generation networks while keeping the total cost of ownership (TCO) in check. The new network may take half the space and power and offer 15 per cent more spectral efficiency, though its TCO may spill over the next two to three years.
Are there any recent product innovations that you would like to talk about?
One is WaveLogic 6 – we have over 30 customers globally and thousands of WaveLogic 6 modems have been ordered, which is a positive sign. The other big change is the whole convergence piece. We believe that the future is going to be converged, with IP and optical coming together. We have built and created a product, WaveRouter, to help customers save costs as it converges high beam optical and provides a converged router.
