industry telecommunications founded 2000 as zepton networks headquarters sunnyvale ca us key people tom fallon ceo ; david f. welch president . products networking systems and products website www.infinera.com infinera corporation is a vertically integrated manufacturer of long haul wavelength division multiplexing wdm optical transmission equipment for the telecommunications service provider market . it was a pioneer in design and manufacture of large scale photonic integrated circuits pics . headquartered in sunnyvale california the company sells data communications equipment to network operators building the global infrastructure that underpins the internet . the company s systems can send large amounts of data on optical fiber cables . contents 1 history 2 technology 2.1 industry overview 2.2 infinera products 3 business strategy 4 customers 5 competition 6 management 7 see also 8 references 9 external links history edit infinera was founded in 2000 as zepton networks by drew perkins jagdeep singh and david welch . it raised its first round of funding in april 2001 . 1 the startup remained in stealth mode until its first products were launched in 2004 although a few early media articles did describe the company s component technology a photonic integrated circuit in indium phosphide . 2 underwritten by goldman sachs infinera went public on the nasdaq in 2007 raising 182 million . 3 david welch was recognized in 2013 with the jj thomson medal for electronics an award from the institution of engineering and technology for his role as a pioneer in the field of optical devices and optical networks including pics . 4 5 in august 2015 infinera acquired transmode a supplier of metro packet optical networking solutions based in stockholm sweden following an offer made in april 2015 . 6 transmode shareholders receiving a mix of cash and infinera shares giving a total equity value for transmode of about 350 million . 7 8 9 today the company has its own fab in sunnyvale with component packaging occurring in allentown pennsylvania plus the former transmode facility in stockholm . for many of its products infinera designs and manufactures in house the photonic integrated circuits pics the asic chips and the hardware and software systems including operating and management systems and software defined network sdn software to extend network virtualization into the optical layer . the company refers to its combined component development product development and system manufacturing as vertically integrated . technology edit industry overview edit optical networking equipment carries information using light waves via fiber optic cables . with the advent of wavelength division multiplexing wdm systems larger amounts of data are transmitted by using multiple wavelengths over a single optical fiber . network operators deploy wdm systems to carry communications between continents across countries between cities and within large metropolitan areas . growth in bandwidth intensive services like streaming high definition videos the proliferation of mobile broadband and the growth of cloud based services is driving the need for increased bandwidth . optical networking is one solution for supporting growing bandwidth requirements . network operators compete by delivering differentiated services ; to do so they need to scale their networks to create rich end user experiences based on efficient high bandwidth transport . infinera products edit infinera has pioneered design and manufacture of large scale photonic integrated circuits pics . 10 over 300 patents have been filed by infinera 11 12 in fields including optical transport and virtualization of optical bandwidth . in march 2011 infinera announced 500 000 hours of failure free operation worldwide . the company claims that its pic technology has never failed in a customer network . 13 14 the production efficiency of using monolithic integration with pic has permitted infinera to build large super channel cards with capacity of 500 gigabit second . in 2015 it announced facebook had deployed an infinera intelligent transport network to light the world s longest terrestrial optical network route 3 998km capable of delivering up to eight terabits per second of data transmission capacity equivalent to streaming one million high def videos simultaneously . 15 this large throughput may be in excess of actual carrier requirements . infinera has changed its business model to permit purchase of a 500 gbit s. line card by a carrier but only switch on capacity in 100 gb second units of capacity . the company refers to this pricing model as cashflow efficient instant bandwidth and has trademarked the term . the company s technology road map projects linecards throughput to scale to 4 terabit and beyond . 16 business strategy edit its business strategy has been based upon introduction of leading edge speeds initially with 10 gb second and as of 2013 100 gb second and 500 gb second based upon superchannels or combining channels . these higher speed offerings are referred to as coherent super channels . these higher level speeds are enabled by the use of photonic integrated circuits pic which combine digital circuitry and photonic circuitry in a hybrid multi layer 3 d component . 10 pic changes the manageability of optical networking it has four major benefits 1 pic is smaller taking up less room in equipment cabinets than the traditional approach of having separate optical and electronic circuitry a significant issue in retrofitting terrestrial and the 550 000 miles of submarine networks 17 18 2 it provides for lower energy consumption 3 the integration permits the provision of real time virtualization of optical bandwidth 19 and 4 purchasers can buy service ready capacity in large chunks only pay for the capacity switched on purchase and switch on unused capacity in 100 gb sec increments without additional equipment installation eliminating the normal costs of service engineers and time delays . real time virtualization of bandwidth represents a relatively new capability in optical transport networks . previously engineers would have to physically reconfigure equipment to provide for reallocation of bandwidth to different customers channels or services . provisioning is exceptionally fast with pic and virtualization . on august 14 2013 dante 20 delivery of advanced networks to europe a research and educational network and infinera claimed that they had set a guinness world records by provisioning 8 terabit second of long haul capacity on the g ant network in 19 minutes and 1 second using its dtn x packet optical transport platform from vancis amsterdam in the netherlands to globalconnect hamburg germany . 21 22 infinera is a vertically integrated company . it has its own fab in sunnyvale ca with component packaging occurring in allentown pa . infinera designs and manufactures everything from the asic chips to the complete hardware and software systems in house . customers edit infinera reports that it had deployed its systems to 126 customers 23 worldwide as of january 2014 . 24 customers included tier 1 domestic carriers tier 1 international carriers mso cable operators internet content providers incumbent carriers research education government and wholesale bandwidth providers . as of january 29 2014 20 of its customers had adopted its dtn x 500 gbit s capable product . competition edit infinera s major direct competitors are alcatel lucent ciena corp. cisco ericsson huawei technologies and zte . major players in the more broadly defined optical market according to technology consulting firms e.g. acg 25 that track the space include adtran adva bti cisco coriant cyan eci telecom fujitsu mrv nec tejas and fibrolan . management edit tom fallon chief executive officer david welch ph.d. president brad feller chief financial officer alastair short senior vice president and general counsel bob jandro senior vice president worldwide sales minoo mortazavi senior vice president systems manufacturing and strategic materials fred kish ph.d. senior vice president optical integrated circuit group scott chandler senior vice president strategic sales lonny orona senior vice president worldwide customer service and technical support dirk corsus senior vice president systems engineering 26 see also edit gmpls otn photonic integrated circuit submarine communications cable wavelength division multiplexing references edit zepton has an 86m war chest light reading 14 december 2001 . accessed 12 august 2015 . the light brigade appeared in red herring in 2002 . archived june 7 2011 at the wayback machine . infinera corp. ipo raises 182 million above range reuters 6 june 2007 . accessed 12 august 2015 . infinera s dr. david welch receives prestigious engineering award from institution of engineering and technology infinera news release 20 november 2013 . accessed 12 august 2015 . infinera co founder receives engineering award photonics.com 20 november 2013 . accessed 12 august 2015 morris iain 9 april 2015 . infinera makes 350m offer for sweden s transmode . light reading . retrieved 13 november 2015 . transmode shareholders accept infinera buyout offer nasdaq rtt news 14 august 2015 . retrieved 24 september 2015 . transmode shareholders ok infinera deal . optics.org . 14 august 2015 . retrieved 16 october 2015 . transmode shareholders approve infinera takeover . light reading . 12 august 2015 . retrieved 13 november 2015 . a b greene kate january 1 2007 . world s fastest optical chip . mit technology review . retrieved 12 august 2015 . results of search in us patent collection db for infinera 340 patents . . us patent database . retrieved 13 november 2015 . google patent search on 12 august 2015 revealed 189 ; freshpatents search for years 2009 2015 up to 12 august 2015 found 278 results . http beta.fool.com p366 2012 08 06 time infinera 8764 dead link infinera named second fastest growing tech company in north america infinera news release 12 november 2009 . accessed 12 august 2015 . kassner michael april 15 2015 . facebook s data center connection to the terrestrial long distance record . techrepublic . retrieved 13 november 2015 . photonic integration infinera white paper 2013 . accessed 12 august 2015 . http www.fastcodesign.com 1671777 infographic the 550000 miles of undersea cabling that powers the internet http www.extremetech.com computing 96827 the secret world of submarine cables http www.myinfinera.com pdfs articles infinerapicieee.pdf http www.geant.net mediacentreevents news pages infinera and dante set guinness world record.aspx http www.infinera.com j7 servlet newsitem newsitemid 371 http www.guinnessworldrecords.com world records 6000 fastest provisioning of a long haul fibre optic link http infinera.com company customers.html http infinera.com company customers.html http www.acgresearch.net domain expert jeff ogle.aspx http www.infinera.com company mgmt.html external links edit www.infinera.com the secret world of submarine cables retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title infinera & oldid 735561344 categories telecommunications equipment vendorsnetworking companies of the united statesnetworking hardware companiescompanies based in sunnyvale californiacompanies established in 2000companies listed on nasdaqhidden categories articles with wayback machine linksall articles with dead external linksarticles with dead external links from august 2015 navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export 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