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Significant changes are engulfing the finance sector and part of the solution for each change requires a robust fiber optic network. In 2020 KPMG / Harvey Nash surveyed the priorities of more than 350 banking industry CIO's. The two top priorities were: 1) improve operational efficiency and 2) increase customer engagement. Almost half (47%) expect to transform their current operating models.

78% of CIO's expect to increase their use of automation throughout their organization. Automation is a huge topic and a few top banking automation priorities include:

1) Developing strategic cooperation with neobanks and fintech companies.
2) Making greater use of robotic process automation software.
3) Universal adoption of cloud computing.
4) Leveraging artificial intelligence and big data in operations.
5) Providing APIs to enable stakeholder application development.
6) Automation and virtualization of the customer relationship.

The banking trends discussed below require high bandwidth, long distance, temperature tolerant, low-latency networks that only fiber optic communications systems deliver.

Opening, Closing and Verifying Accounts
Considerable time, effort and labor is needed to open/close accounts, resolve fraud issues, process trusts/probate, manage portfolios and prove customer identity. Many processes require documents and approvals and review by multiple personnel that may take weeks. In the future, these processes will be done through automated forms, large file scanning/storage, optical character recognition, biometric IDs with artificial intelligence driving the process. Each step requires significant file transfers from local banking facilities to regional data centers. Optical networks offer the high data rates, resilience, low latency, security and long distance needed to enable this process and for it to appear near instantaneous.

Capital Management and Robo Advisors
Increasingly, banks will add value through custom tailored financial services. Relationship Managers will assist customers with financial strategies for savings, investing, capital management, compliance, reporting and other services. These advisors will be highly specialized and communicate remotely with clients in virtual offices using custom tailored data sets using multimedia tools. The volume of multimedia data will require optical bandwidth to deliver and significant data center processing for analysis.

Payments and Transfers
Peer-to-peer (P2P) exchanges, P2P lending, business-to-business transactions, and all manner of routine banking will take place on secure blockchain based networks that empower the customer and eliminate mundane human banking tasks. The elaborate network of servers, storage, data centers and communications needed for processing millions of transactions per minute can only function at the speed of light on fiber optic networks.

Whether you are building banking co-location facilities or private clouds, ProLabs has the expertise and inventory of transceivers and interconnect cabling to link thousands of servers to switches at 10G, 25G, 100G or higher within these facilities.

If you are interconnecting bank branches to regional offices and data centers or to the wider telecommunications infrastructure, ProLabs also specializes in supplying 100G to 400G high speed, long distance, temperature compensated DWDM, CWDM and gray optics for your network needs.

Simply contact us to find out more.

What is data center cabling?

The connectivity provided by good cable management is the foundation of every data center — enabling the transactions that help businesses make mission-critical decisions every day. All data centers have various cabling types, ranging from all-copper installation to all-fiber installation and everything in between (depending on your equipment and requirements). Whether the cables in question are for power or data, failure to properly manage this part of data center infrastructure can cause serious issues, from increased operating costs to more expensive outages. Cable management cannot be an afterthought.

Data center cabling usually fall into one of two setup disciplines:

Structured cabling

Uses predefined standards based on design with preset connection points and pathways. Specifically structured cabling enforces a cabling design based on the bandwidth requirements of the system.

After testing to ensure good performance, the cables will then get organized and labeled.

• Pros: Longer lifespan compared with an unstructured approach, lower long run operational costs.
• Cons: Longer install process, initial higher costs.

Unstructured cabling (Point to point cabling systems)

Does not utilize predefined standards, connection points, or pathways. Because of airflow restrictions, this cabling system might lead to cooling issues and higher energy costs. Given that unstructured cabling does not use preset plans or designs, managing system growth will be more challenging since there is no guide to guide changes in cable locations or run new cabling.

• Pros: Not much other than it may take less time to install and pose fewer initial costs.
• Cons: Ultimately, unstructured cabling will end in higher operational costs and a shorter system lifespan.

How to master installation

• Standards Guide: ANSI/TIA-942-B-2017 Telecommunications Infrastructure Standard for Data Centers
• Standards Guide: BICSI 002-2019 Data Center Design Implementation & Best Practices
• Testing and Certification: To ensure that the infrastructure is working and will support your bandwidth and system needs.
• Documentation: To record the types of cables used and the locations and connections of each cable to ease future troubleshooting or maintenance.
• Measure: To ensure that the cables are of proper length. This measurement prevents unforeseen downtime to critical IT equipment caused by loose wires getting tangled or disconnected.
• Growth plan: Make sure your system is appropriate for the foreseeable future. Ensure that racks and cable trays get ergonomically designed to accommodate anticipated growth.

How to master organization

• Run cables to the sides of server racks to ease adding or removing servers from the shelf.
• Bundle cables together to conveniently connect the next piece of hardware down to the floor in data centers with elevated floors or up to the ceiling in data centers with wires that run through the ceiling.
• Plan in advance for installing additional hardware. Disorganized cabling can interfere with air circulation and cooling patterns. Planning prevents damages due to quickly rising temperatures caused by restricted air movement.
• Label cables securely on each end. This labeling process enables you to conveniently locate cables for testing or repair, install new equipment, or remove extra cables after equipment has been moved or upgraded, which saves time and money.
• Color code cables for quick identification. Choose a color scheme that works for you and your team. It may be wise to put up a legend signifying the meaning of the colors of each cable. You may also color-code the cable’s destination, especially for larger installations across floors or offices.

For over two decades ProLabs has provided data center operators around the world with high quality transceivers and cabling solutions. ProLabs can support your data center needs with the widest range of MSA compliant, compatible optical transceivers, DACs, and AOCs.

Contact us today to future-proof and optimize your data center performance.

Data connections via a fiber are simple to comprehend, requiring laser transceivers and fiber connectors at each end. Moving on from these fundamentals connections in data centers can be very complicated. Appreciating the service levels and ownership at each step can make or break a good data center roll out:

1) Types of Data Centers and Connections

• Owned Data Centers – Businesses that own and operate their own data center are responsible for all the management of the fiber optic connections. Data Center Interconnect is the connection between two or more, separately located data centers provided by a carrier, or via leased, or owned fiber by the data center. Campus cross-connects are a physical link between servers, routers, switches, or other equipment. However, instead of existing within one building, the connection is made between two geographically separate buildings.

• Hosted and Cloud Data Centers – They provide data processing, and bandwidth which is packaged into a consumption-based pricing model or a monthly fee. The data center oversees all of the fiber optics connections from rack to the carrier separation point. Providing customer with a direct fiber connection to their cloud service provider and removes the need for data to travel via public links between the cloud provider and the customer.

• Colocation Data Centers – These provide a wide variety of services that begin with floor space, power, and bandwidth. Plus, they use numerous tenants under one roof to maximize the significant resources required to effectively operate a data center. Fiber optic connections in colocation data centers are more complicated, as the data center may manage physical fiber level ‘Cross-Connects” between a tenant and a carrier or a tenant and another tenant. This underlines the importance of making the correct choices for fiber optic connectivity. Colocation data centers can be carrier owned, or carrier neutral. Carrier neutrals have physical fiber connections with two or more “On-net” service providers. In addition, other third-party service providers may provide fiber to the data center to service customers. This differs from a data center which is served exclusively by one service provider.

• Carrier Hotel – This is a building with fiber connections to numerous service providers where inter connection between two or more providers can be created. It is not a data center.

2) Fiber Ownership

There is an important difference between who owns or leases the fiber. The primary fiber providers include the following organizations:

• Internet Content Providers – More companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Akami and Alibaba are now building their own fiber infrastructure to support content collection, analysis, and distribution.

• Service Providers – Typically they are the telecommunications or cable companies e.g. Verizon, Deutch Telecom, Tata, Tata, or Comcast.

• Dark Fiber Providers – Various companies such as Crown and Castle, eunetworks, and Zayo, lease fiber to others. Leases are called Indefeasible Right of Use (IRU) and grant the lessor exclusive right to the fiber.

3) Technical Specifications

There is a broad mixture of technical parameters needed for these connections. Fiber connections are usually agnostic to the upper layer protocols that traverse the connection, but they are typically specified and may even define the connection type. A limited list of specifications that may be required includes:

1. Type, length, or loss of fiber

2. Data rate

3. Connector

4. Wavelength

5. Transceiver (e.g. coherent, PAM)

6. Other cables (AOC, DOC)

7. Layer 2 service

8. Layer 3 service

Typically, there are numerous transceiver choices for each connection type. ProLabs has the experience and the knowledge to help customers understand the many trade-offs. The most common transceivers for data center links are the SFP, SFP+ and QSFP+ form factors, these typically connect over longer distances. The reach, data rate, connector type, wavelength and operating temperature will be relevant to making the optimal selection.

Fiber connections within the data center may present the widest range of options for both transceivers and the AOC/DOC cables used to create efficient fiber architectures within the building.

Whatever your connection type, ProLabs can provide you with both the expertise and the inventory to deliver the best solution for your business.

For more information contact us today

Global server chip shortage worsens, Intel & AMD in tight supply

It's no secret that the tech industry is facing serious supply chain issues resulting in shortages in everything from graphics cards to integrated circuits (ICs). When it comes to ICs for servers and data centers, the problem is worsening with Cisco, Arista, Juniper, and HP seeing long lead times for their overseas manufactured switches and routers. Intel and AMD data center and server ICs have increased lead times from 52 to 70 weeks.

Chip crunch extended to 2023, expected by top semiconductor & electronics manufacturers

Industry sources polled by DigiTimes indicated that shortages of server components are unlikely to ease or be resolved within the next 17 months.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger in April commented that it would take “a couple of years” for the chip sector to rebound from the shortage. He explained the only way to correct the imbalance between supply and demand is to establish additional production capacity. Since modern fabrications take years to build and equip, significantly ramping up production proves difficult.

Flex Ltd., the world's third-largest OEM and EMS provider expects that the global chip shortage will continue into 2023. The firm which counts Ford, HP, and Dyson as clients, has encountered major disruptions due to the crisis. Without critical components or parts, Flex had to temporarily shut down some of its production lines.

Bad news for network operators counting on OEMs like Cisco and HP to deliver

With over a year of pandemic spurring digital transformation and data demand, network operators are under pressure to deliver the goods. Their strategies and long awaited plans to overhaul network IT equipment to meet rising business and consumer demands are now stalled. The inflection point - to wait for OEM supply problems to pass or seek alternative solutions.

What are the options?

Ripping and replacing OEM systems with new ones can be effective strategies to overhaul legacy infrastructure, but it can also be complex and expensive. Consider other strategies to optimize existing infrastructure while keeping upgrades simple and affordable.

OEM compatible optics in a wide range of form factors, speeds, wavelengths, and reach are plug and play solutions that can be integrated easily with existing network infrastructure. These readily available alternatives can quickly alleviate network bottlenecks for bandwidth and speed. Extending the life of an existing network infrastructure will be important to riding the current supply chain shortage.

View our transceivers and DACs & AOCs.

ProLabs is committed to helping you find a solution.

As the world’s largest independent manufacturer of optical transceivers and high-speed cabling, ProLabs offers both legacy and cutting-edge TAA compliant products designed to scale existing networks. We provide a broad range of in-stock, ready to ship, 100% OEM compatible solutions.

Don't let supply chain woes stall your mission-critical projects. Receive your optics within days - not weeks or months. 95% of orders are fulfilled same day, shipped from the U.S. or U.K.

Contact us today.

With 11% CAGR between 2021 and 2026, annual spending on dark fiber will reach $8.7 billion annually by 2026 according to an April 2021 report by Market and Markets. In Europe some of the leading dark fiber providers are: euNetworks, GasLINE, Lyntia and Eurofiber. In the US top names include: Zayo, Lumen, and Crown Castle. These are in addition to fiber investments by more traditional telecom companies like AT&T, NTT and Colt. What trends are driving this massive fiber investment? The short answer is the need for more bandwidth, faster data rates and longer distance links. Fiber is the ideal media because it has nearly unlimited ability to enable all three.

However, bandwidth, speed and distance do not tell the whole story. End users, corporations, governments and increasingly other connected devices are using fiber to reach data centers for valuable new applications. Here are some ways fiber enables these applications:

1) Lower latency
Latency is the time it takes for a packet to travel from point A to point Z. Fiber offers the fastest transmission and hence the lowest latency. 5G cellular service would be impossible without low latency in the Radio Access Network. Likewise, autonomously driven vehicles also require extremely low latency to enable rapid reaction time between the vehicle and the data processing points.

2) Larger files
The need to transmit larger files is a given for many contemporary applications. Radiology is an example. Radiology files are massive; the machines that create them relatively scarce and the experts that read them are distributed geographically. Huge patient files are often captured in one local and sent to experts for diagnosis in another location. Fiber enables these large file transfers.

3) Higher data volumes
Researchers investigating physics, genetic simulations, commercial mineral geology, aerospace engineering, and many other disciplines must often analyze massive data sets in near-real time. Fiber provides the bandwidth and speed that supercomputers working in parallel require to process these massive data sets.

4) Faster data communication rates
Streaming movies, interactive gaming, real-time retail inventory control, and other streaming services require faster communication speeds. Only fiber will support the data rates needed for these services over the distances involved.

5) Increased security
Fiber is difficult to tap compared to other media. In addition, encryption and other advanced security techniques are enabled with the higher data rates and faster response times enabled by fiber networks.

Transceivers drive these new applications and unlock the potential fiber offers. The vast majority of transceivers used on these new fiber networks are SFP+, SFP28, QSFP-56 and QSFP-DD. There are hundreds of options within these 4 categories of SFPs. ProLabs has one of the largest SFP transceiver inventories and industry experts focused on selecting the optimal solution for your network. In addition, ProLabs is distinguished by the rigorous testing and validation we do in house to ensure interoperability of transceivers with network equipment. Transceivers, DACs and AOCs, offered by ProLabs support WDM and gray wavelengths at data rates from 1G to 400G for all the major protocols and vendors such as CISCO, Extreme, HPE, Juniper and Palo Alto to name just a few.

Contact us today to improve and future-proof your data center performance.