The announcement was made the following day.
Predictions
The Partner Director Network Architecture later updated his title to GM Infrastructure Planning (Network, Land, Power) across the world for Microsoft’s cloud.
The following month it became clear that CPO was losing steam a little bit. Near-packaged optics” began being discussed.
About a year later, a bidding war ensued over Coherent. II-VI stated with the buyout, its revenues in the traditional space would go below 50%.
“Thus, we continue to believe it should be destined to become a desirable acquisition candidate.” Marvell announced its purchase intention in October.
“There undoubtedly have to be major executive replacements at lower levels of the management structure.” The next day there was the following: https://bit.ly/2RMbvf2
Towards the end of that month, the supplier acknowledged the later availability of its silicon photonics solution.
Foreshadowing of the merger with Lumentum resulting in the divestiture of Oclaro’s data communications transceiver business, and greater focus on photonic chips in general.
On the roles of Beck Mason and Walter Jankovic with the Lumentum merger as well as the assumed original reference to who became the CSO.
Next quarterly earnings call: “We’re not baking a second customer [for ColorZ] in our guidance for either Q4 or in our forecast for ’19.”
Finisar demoed a new 25G SFP28 for 5G fronthaul apps at OFC 2019.
In March 2019, two optical architects at Microsoft appeared to go out of their way not to mention “COBO” in their presentations at OFC.
Later, Heard was promoted to COO. In May 2019, it became clear that Infinera made the Groove and the original “Tellabs” orchestration software the priorities.
We predicted (see comments section) it would happen much sooner than the conventional wisdom.
Shortly afterward, there was acknowledgement by others sources regarding the terrible market conditions created by the hyperscalers in forcing down prices to unhealthy levels.
Despite extending the 1550nm wavelength resulting in a very complicated solution that was impractical, discontinuation did not actually happen.
In May, 2019, the operator started to openly admit that the sweet spot for 5G is a very focused, enterprise play.
“One way or another, we would not be shocked if ICE5 never becomes real in terms of commercial offerings.” Ultimately, ICE5 never became a reality.
Three months later, Verizon’s selection of Calix was announced.
During the summer of ’17, it became abundantly certain that such bullish forecasts were way off the mark.
A scheduled U.S. House committee in 9/17 even had to be canceled because no firms would commit publicly to being there.
AOI’s valuation declined substantially five days later.
A little over a month later, ADVA pre-announced weakness for that quarter.
Next quarterly conference call: Lumentum decided to cease being so specific on “how much money it expects to make on componentry for the iPhone.”
About two years later, MACOM abandoned the module space.
Our assumption proved accurate with an announcement of the XTM II by Infinera the following month.
We are not aware of any commercially available TIP offerings, other than ADVA Optical Networking’s DCI box.
A year later our prediction became true with the first news reports that Huawei Technologies would start producing new types of optical components in-house.
By 9/17, it became clear that short-term, pent-up demand in China alone created the supercycle idea, and that there were not multiple market drivers.
Ciena launched WaveLogic Ai the next day, its fourth-generation DSP.
Later, Calient, secured only $1.3M in venture funding, and then was forced to give up a controlling interest in the firm in order to survive.
Since 2010, Mark has stated that all of Google’s investments unconnected with its core competency are not usually ends in themselves.
In early 9/16, a prominent investment firm downgraded Ciena based on “valuation” despite no justification for its market cap being about $1B lower than Acacia.
Towards end of 2017: Orange stated that its “all-IP’ plans were moved back to ’22, and it was in the context of “fixed broadband lines.”
7/17: a report of “record levels of venture capital…investment in [London’s] tech sector.” Then as of 1Q’18, the economy was still doing “fine.”
The use of open line systems have remained predominantly in data center networks.
In public networks, SDN continues to be deployed mainly in greenfield applications, specifically in the access portion.
Foreshadowing of the later deal on WaveLogic Ai with three component vendors — at least it gave the appearance of inadequate attention to IP protection.
Nokia’s optical sales have remained strong on submarine applications, but there has also not been a change in the relatively slow growth for dry networks.
Even when Infinera initially announced its substantially higher capacity, 2.4 terabit PIC in March, 2016, it specified 16QAM.
ADVA’s percentage of its sales in DCI about doubled the following year.
Xtera had insufficient appreciation of the higher level of scrutiny involved in opening up its accounts to the world.
In 8/17, the Infinera leadership finally admitted that it dropped the ball with the TM series.
Over three years later, AT&T was looking to divest the satellite assets.
In not selling its enterprise business, as the newswire report indicated, there were considerations otherwise, such as Verizon 5G wireless offerings would be bolstered.
At OIDA Executive Forum 17: we recall Finisar exec tempering over-enthusiasm about 400G demand outlook based on very small number of potential data center buyers.
The next month we were first news source to state that Foxconn press release in Chinese meant that it had bought Avago’s optical module business.
In 10/15 Light Reading post on investor research note: “We think Verizon intends to abandon Alcatel-Lucent as a second source for its long-haul network….”
In 7/17, Verizon probably made first admission of plan by stating “objective was to concentrate landline operations in contiguous northeast markets to enhance operational efficiency….”
Towards the end of 2018, it was abundantly clear that Verizon was not serious about “Oath” as a business enterprise.
Ciena unwisely destroyed the high-margin, transport gear of Cyan, and the sales performance of the original “Blue Planet” was less than stellar.
A study group for 200GbE was established by the IEEE standards body soon afterward, recognizing that an entire data rate generation had been recklessly ignored.
Indeed, the handwriting was on the wall at an early stage.
Certainly, it eventually became well-known that Avago (Broadcom) excelled at at selling VCSEL bare die.
