For all those fans of optical networking out there, you may well remember a time when equipment vendors were as plentiful as online pet supply vendors. I know I certainly do, back in 2000, before the party ended.
Over the transom today came a document from equipment vendor Ciena (CIEN), which was one of the first outfits in the business, back in the ’90s, and today stands as perhaps not the sole survivor (Alcatal-Lucent (ALU) and Cisco Systems (CSCO) sell the stuff), but certainly a survivor nonetheless.
The slide below from Ciena shows its revenue mounting over a number of years, linked to the passing from view of one after another optical or high-speed networking firm.
Leaving aside the self-promotional aspect of the graphic, it is quite engaging to relive those days of bygone networking hopefuls.
Many of these outfits basically shut down and sold off assets, such as Crescent Networks, the edge router vendor, whose name appears around 2003 on the slide, though it’s a little hard to make out here. They ceased regular operations that year, according to press reports. Some sold their assets to healthier firms, such as core router vendor Procket Networks, whose designs were picked up by Cisco.
Sycamore Networks (SCMR) just today announced it filed a “certificate of dissolution” in Delaware, in accordance with its intent to liquidate its assets. Its shares will henceforth trade on the over-the-counter market.
The slide is incomplete, mind you, and I can remember a few that should be memorialized here but aren’t, such as PhotonEx, which had been developing a 40-billion-bit-per-second optical transport system that was all the buzz back in the day.
(click for larger image)
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