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Vtesse customer Lloyds TSB has won the Infrastructure Strategy category of the Retail Banking Technology Awards presented by leading financial services journal The Banker.

Commenting on the award, Aidan Paul, CEO of Vtesse networks said It is good to see the efforts of the combined Lloyds TSB, IBM and Vtesse team on this visionary project recognised in this way. This was a true team effort and the end result clearly demonstrates the advantage that organisations who become Vtesse Optically Enabled Enterprises can gain in a competitive market.

The Banker described the award like this:

INFRASTRUCTURE STRATEGY

Winner: Lloyds TSB
Project: Lloyds TSB Voice and Data Initiative

Network capacity is becoming a growing concern for the global business community, for whom high-speed, international communication and information sharing is vital. Limitations in a bank’s network capacity, as Lloyds TSB discovered, can inhibit business agility and change.

Rather than turning to a traditional telecoms operator to solve its networking problems, Lloyds TSB partnered with IBM, who subsequently played the role of systems integrator, bringing together the most cost-efficient technologies from a number of suppliers, in order to build a network specifically for Lloyds TSB. During the project, a fibre optic core was designed and built <by Vtesse> which – due to the bank’s exclusive use of the fibres – is able to provide almost limitless bandwidth to critical Lloyds TSB sites.

For Lloyds TSB, the new network serves as a crucial platform by which the bank is now able to fully exploit modern applications. Now, the network is no longer the inhibitor, but an enabler for business change, representing an impressive, cost-effective infrastructural triumph for the bank.

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Vtesse Networks announce national “Vtesse Virtual Dark Fibre” service
22nd May 2008 Hertford, UK.

Vtesse greatly simplify deployment of long distance optical network services

Vtesse Networks today announced the availability of its new national “Vtesse Virtual Dark Fibre” service at IDC’s annual Enterprise Datacentre Conference in London.

The new service provides a cost effective alternative to dedicated long distance dark fibre pairs between geographically dispersed data centres and significantly reduces the complexity of planning and implementing Gigabit and Terabit level regional and national connectivity for business critical business applications.

Designed to appeal to large enterprises and government agencies as a means of providing the multi gigabit levels of bandwidth needed to replicate storage and synchronise processing between data centres, the new Vtesse service provides a foundation for the latest 10 and 40 Gigabit transmission technologies as well as emerging 100 Gigabit systems.

The service is based on Vtesse’s own national fibre network, now one of the largest in the UK. Using purely optical technologies, the service can be presented at customer premises throughout the UK. It allows users to directly interface their own electronic networking equipment to the service and it is capable of supporting any protocol at any level of bandwidth. For example, an Enterprise customer might use the service between datacentres to provide multiple channels of 10 Gigabit Ethernet and 8 Gigabit Fibre Channel.  A systems integrator might use the service to augment their own private networks to provide backbone 40 Gigabit services between Gloucester, Plymouth and Rugby.

Last mile connectivity is provided using dedicated dark fibre pairs using network routes designed to support the service levels required by each customer.
To the customer’s equipment, the long distance Vtesse Virtual Dark Fibre service behaves like a medium distance pair of dark fibres.

The benefits are fivefold:

Firstly, the deployment of long distance private optical networking services is now greatly simplified as the majority of the routes have been pre-built, offsetting the time taken to build dedicated services and thus reduces time taken to deploy new services.

Secondly, by using specialist optical technologies, Vtesse are able to virtually “slice” the fibres it operates on these long distance routes into individual dedicated “channels”, allowing each fibre pair to carry many individual customers services, each offering similar capability to a pair of dark fibres. This reduces cost compared to a dedicated pair of fibres.

Thirdly, as Vtesse optically amplifies the signals approximately every 80Km in its own premises along each route, the customer is spared the (high) cost of providing and maintaining their own amplifiers as well as the cost of the premises required to locate them.
Fourthly, the customer only has to bear an equitable share of the government rates levied on dedicated pairs of optical fibres along the route – which can be a significant burden over long distances (see notes).

Lastly, the topography of the Vtesse national fibre network allows for complete route diversity to all locations, enabling the five nines availability demanded by many enterprise customers.

Aidan Paul, Chief Executive of Vtesse comments “Our new virtual dark fibre service can seriously reduce the cost and complexity of planning and deploying long distance, high bandwidth connectivity.  It can also improve service provisioning time. The Vtesse Virtual Dark Fibre service may well enable projects that have historically been shelved on budgetary grounds to resurface once again.”

The new service has been deployed in a high availability diversely connected configuration supporting multiple gigabit Ethernet, SDH, Fibre Channel and Ficon wavelengths for tape backup and both synchronous and asynchronous storage replication as well as for inter processor synchronisation at a leading UK retail bank.

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Note to editors:

The Vtesse service is based upon passive optical components which greatly improves service reliability.  It differs from typical Gigabit services offered by network operators on long distance routes, which are normally based upon multiplexed optical wavelengths, in that the Vtesse service offers unconstrained optical capacity between customer premises. The Vtesse service can offer a lower total cost of ownership than a pair of dark fibres on route distances of 50Km or more. The longer the route distance, the more pronounced the savings will be.  Vtesse Virtual Dark Fibre does not bear comparison with the limited bandwidth services offered by a managed wavelength providers.

Note on dark fibre rateable values: Business rates are payable on each pair of lit fibres in the ground. A budgetary average of £250 per route kilometre per annum is prudent.

Milpitas, CA / Hertford, UK, May 12, 2008 -- OpVista, Inc., a leading manufacturer of high performance packet optical networking systems, and Vtesse Networks, a leading provider of private optical networks for Fortune 500 & FTSE 100 enterprises in the UK, today announced that Vtesse has successfully completed a 40G trial deployment of OpVista’s Dense Multi-Carrier DMC technology.  As part of a strategic initiative to deliver new bandwidth services cost effectively, Vtesse deployed a DMC-generated 40G wavelength over an 860 km 534 mile link on an in-service 10G-engineered optical network.

This trial demonstrates DMC technology’s ability to enable service providers like Vtesse to incrementally upgrade their optical transport network capacity to support the growing crush of corporate storage and consumer driven video services without costly network re-engineering.  Announced today, DMC technology combines advanced multiple carrier photonics, lambda stabilization, and multi-level modulation to deliver 40G and 100G bandwidth per wavelength, while maintaining compatibility with the characteristics of today’s 10G optical infrastructure.

“As the leading specialist optical networking service provider to many of the UK’s largest and most effective organizations, it is essential that we give our enterprise customers the ability to exploit the very latest in optical networking technologies to deliver continuous gigabit and terabit level connectivity affordably, reliably and securely,” said Aidan Paul, Chief Executive Officer, Vtesse Networks.  “Based on this trial, I can easily see how Vtesse can cost effectively maintain its industry leading network performance and meet existing customer demand for 40G services using OpVista’s DMC-based system products.  We are extremely impressed by OpVista’s DMC technology and its ability to overlay new high-speed services on our existing infrastructure without any dispersion impairments.”

“Vtesse has a well earned reputation for operating one of the most advanced, high performance optical networks in Europe.  This trial demonstrates how simple it is to use DMC technology enabled solutions to expand the service carrying capacity of existing 10G networks,” said Karl May, President and Chief Executive Officer, OpVista.  “DMC technology gives service providers the capacity they need to deliver new, bandwidth-intensive services without requiring investment in re-building their installed 10G optical networks.  With DMC technology, service providers worldwide can finally break free from the traditional cycle of major capital investments and “fork lift” upgrades to enable new revenue-generating services.”

About OpVista

OpVista provides optical networking products to worldwide telecommunications and cable operators for the industry’s highest-capacity metro and regional networks.  The OpVista portfolio utilizes patented Dense Multi-Carrier technology to provide industry-leading bandwidth over existing fiber infrastructure, eliminating the need for expensive network redesign and allowing service providers to offer new services cost-effectively.  OpVista is based in Milpitas, CA.

On May 22nd at the Russell Hotel, Russell Square, London, WC1B 5BE. 
Vtesse Networks will be sponsoring IDC’s annual Enterprise Datacentre Conference.
The event is designed for senior IT, facilities and operations executives seeking practical tools and strategies for transforming their datacentre to meet the needs of the changing business climate.
 
The conference will examine current hot topics, including:
• Untangling Virtualisation - Myths and Realities
• Working Towards a Carbon Neutral Environment
• The Next Generation Datacentre - Networks, Infrastructure and Systems

As the leading specialist optical networking service provider to many of the UK’s largest and most effective organisations, Vtesse Networks will illustrate through case studies how
enterprise companies can exploit the very latest in optical networking technologies to deliver continuous gigabit and terabit level connectivity, affordably, reliably and securely between multiple datacentres.

As a sponsor of this event, Vtesse Networks are able to offer end users free of charge attendance to this conference. To register, visit the IDC website www.idc.com/uk/datacentre08 and enter
‘Vtesse Guest’ in the promotional code box.

Vtesse Networks, has been named Britain’s 22nd fastest growing technology company in The Sunday Times Microsoft Tech Track 100, published on 30th September 2007.  Vtesse’s inclusion in this prestigious list comes after the company has seen it revenues rise from £2.4 million in 2004 to £17.3 million in 2006; equivalent to 171% annual growth. 

The British tech industry is booming at the moment so it’s a tremendous honour to be named one of the country’s fastest growing companies,” said Aidan Paul, founder and CEO, Vtesse Networks.  “All credit goes to our staff; without their expertise and commitment, we’d never be able to design and deliver advanced communications networks to match the very exacting requirements of some of the UK’s largest brands.”

According to The Sunday Times Microsoft Tech Track 100, Vtesse is the fifth fastest growing technology company based in the South East of England.

1st May 2007, Hertford, UK

Vtesse Networks www.vtesse.com today announced that it’s private Enterprise Optical Networking Designs are now capable of incorporating the latest implementations of the industry standard specification G.709, commonly called Optical Transport Network OTN across 2.7 OTU1, 10.7 OTU2 and  43 OTU3 Gigabit optical channels.

OTN is a next-generation, industry-standard protocol providing an efficient and interoperable way to multiplex services onto optical light paths allowing different traffic types—including Ethernet, Fibre Channel, IP, GFP, digital video, as well as SONET/SDH to be multiplexed into a single Optical Transport Unit OTU frame. The technology overcomes one of the fundamental limitations of traditional Wave Division Multiplexing systems which cause individual wavelengths to be dedicated to individual protocols, often leading to sub-optimal utilisation of capacity, particularly in multi-protocol private Enterprise networks.

OTN also provides more effective optical network management.  Since the protocol allows for full performance-monitoring of all the multi-service traffic mentioned above, it is ideal for carrying the Fibre Channel and 10 Gigabit Ethernet traffic now commonly demanded by users of private optical networks.

Vtesse offers OTN capability on all of its Enterprise Optical Network designs.

This was the question up for discussion at this year’s IT Directors Strategy meeting.  Held at the Portman Hotel in the West End, the conference brought together IT professionals from a wide range of blue chip and public organisations, all aiming to gain further insight into industry developments which will shape the future of their businesses.

High on the agenda was Optical Networking and the conference was delighted to welcome Vtesse Networks CEO Aidan Paul as key note speaker on the subject.

As head of the company that delivers Optical Networking services to some of the largest and most demanding organisations in the world, Aidan provided an expert perspective on the reality of Optical Networking.

Focusing on the continual demand for growth and change and the need to develop networks that support transformation without compromising bandwidth, availability, security and budgetary constraints, Aidan outlined why the world’s leading organisations are transitioning to the Optical Network.

Using examples of existing FTSE100 clients, Aidan talked through the features of the Optical Network: virtually unlimited bandwidth, exceptionally high service levels, security, scalability and viability.

Delegates at the conference were quick to recognise how these features could be successfully applied to their own organisations, providing an adaptive platform for continuous operation, distributed storage, consolidated servers, legacy and modern application designs and secure service delivery.

For a copy of Aidan’s Key Note presentation, please contact us

As more and more large companies recognise the benefits of the Private Optical Network, Vtesse Networks is staying ahead of the game by building on their team of technical and commercial specialists. A team trusted by some of the largest and most demanding organisations in the world.

Sales and Marketing Director at Vtesse, David Grant says “Our client base is growing at an incredible pace as companies realise that the Private Optical Network is the way forward for high quality unlimited bandwidth, continual availability, guaranteed security and scalability. Key to our success at Vtesse is our people, whose expertise enables us to deliver a unique combination of world class design, delivery and support services. We’re committed to developing and growing our team to meet the exacting requirements of our clients and to maintain the exceptional service levels for which we are renowned”

Joining the team at Vtesse are Account Managers Phil French and Neil Ferguson, Channel Development Manager Gareth Lovell, NOC Manager Phil Paine, Senior NOC Engineer Tunde Oyenekan and Junior NOC Engineer Harvey Shergill.