Case Study

Consulting Work for Zirra

“Thanks for the professional and very helpful work, and even more so for the attitude!”
Aner Ravon, Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer, Zirra

Zirra offers a variety of investment strategies and differentiates itself by using alternative data and insights. After offering important feedback to a client of Zirra in early 2016, fibeReality was asked by the firm to provide it with a competitive and strategic analysis of the international data communications transceiver space that autumn for both component and system vendors, including on these aspects: cost, pricing margins, technology, reputation, leadership, and personnel. We also looked at customer requirements and deployment plans as well as upcoming industry trends.

There was a good amount of foreshadowing in this document including the following 16 examples:

1) 100G PSM4s heading to sub-$200;

2) expected dramatic pricing drops on CWDM4 modules;

3) Juniper’s purchase of Aurrion easily being a mini-disaster;

4) our bet that Kaiam was having difficulty with profitability;

5) polymer solutions from both Lightwave Logic and Poet not going anywhere;

6) Mellanox’s pickup of Kotura being somewhat devastating because of incompatibility with existing solutions;

7) Oclaro’s fab as being its key asset and that the company will either be absorbed or will no longer be around;

8) concerning COBO, that there is a strong possibility of an insufficient business model to move from a very cottage industry to one of mass production;

9) on pluggable transceivers themselves, they offer a flexibility that is familiar to the general customer base and that the industry’s learning curve is in building these components;

10) the entire 25G ecosystem will want to get a return on its investment before shifting to 50G;

11) there will be consequences to the outlandish valuation for what is essentially only a differentiated DSP vendor, Acacia Communications;

12) there will likely be fewer hardware system vendors as time goes on – it is increasingly harder to differentiate or to find value-added software alternatives to get margins higher;

13) there probably is not room for more than two major optical, datacom transceiver vendors based in the US;

14) Ranovus is well funded, and it could easily remain in the picture;

15) Luxtera could certainly be gone soon (or perhaps picked up) because of prices declines; and

16) NeoPhotonics is highly specialized and will either remain in the marketplace or get acquired.

Consulting Work for Zirra

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“Thanks for the professional and very helpful work, and even more so for the attitude!”
Aner Ravon, Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer, Zirra

Zirra offers a variety of investment strategies and differentiates itself by using alternative data and insights. After offering important feedback to a client of Zirra in early 2016, fibeReality was asked by the firm to provide it with a competitive and strategic analysis of the international data communications transceiver space that autumn for both component and system vendors, including on these aspects: cost, pricing margins, technology, reputation, leadership, and personnel. We also looked at customer requirements and deployment plans as well as upcoming industry trends.

There was a good amount of foreshadowing in this document including the following 16 examples:
1) 100G PSM4s heading to sub-$200;
2) expected dramatic pricing drops on CWDM4 modules;
3) Juniper’s purchase of Aurrion easily being a mini-disaster;
4) our bet that Kaiam was having difficulty with profitability;
5) polymer solutions from both Lightwave Logic and Poet not going anywhere;
6) Mellanox’s pickup of Kotura being somewhat devastating because of incompatibility with existing solutions;
7) Oclaro’s fab as being its key asset and that the company will either be absorbed or will no longer be around;
8) concerning COBO, that there is a strong possibility of an insufficient business model to move from a very cottage industry to one of mass production;
9) on pluggable transceivers themselves, they offer a flexibility that is familiar to the general customer base and that the industry’s learning curve is in building these components;
10) the entire 25G ecosystem will want to get a return on its investment before shifting to 50G;
11) there will be consequences to the outlandish valuation for what is essentially only a differentiated DSP vendor, Acacia Communications;
12) there will likely be fewer hardware system vendors as time goes on – it is increasingly harder to differentiate or to find value-added software alternatives to get margins higher;
13) there probably is not room for more than two major optical, datacom transceiver vendors based in the US;
14) Ranovus is well funded, and it could easily remain in the picture;
15) Luxtera could certainly be gone soon (or perhaps picked up) because of prices declines; and
16) NeoPhotonics is highly specialized and will either remain in the marketplace or get acquired.

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