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Fifteen years of history

from the eyes of Brian Protiva, co-founder and current CEO of ADVA Optical Networking

2007-2009 We continued to grow as an organization - in size and in complexity. We added new executives to steer the company and lead us through the next phase of our development. We implemented global IT platforms that a company of our size requires. We grew to more than 1,000 employees on five continents.

We have come a long way. Enterprise to carrier, and now a mix of about 75% carrier and 25% enterprise business. Some of our carriers use our products for data center connectivity or global backbones for enterprises.

Today we have two common architectures (FSP 3000 and FSP 150) and we continue to be an innovation leader. We have some of the best people in industry working on innovative solutions for our customers. We remain committed to delivering Optical+Ethernet solutions for tomorrow's networks where video, storage and Ethernet access will continue to drive a massive uptake of bandwidth and next-generation technology.

2006 We knew where the network was going and where we needed to be. We saw a few companies that were leading the pack in the Ethernet OAM, optical control plane and ROADM arenas. In this year, we finalized the acquisitions of both Covaro Networks and Movaz Networks.

2004 Recognizing the increasing importance of Ethernet to the future network, we invested in and then later fully acquired Metro Packet Systems, Inc. (California, U.S.). We leveraged the MPS acquisition to launch the first FSP 150 Ethernet access products. This family of products has been consolidated by taking multiple products and integrating them into one common infrastructure.

FSP 150

2001-2003 All of a sudden our world froze over - we definitely didn't talk about global warming back then.To survive, we put our heads down, our shoulders to the wind and kept our vision in mind. We actually increased our market share during these hard years - we went from 0.2% to 2% of the market, just by staying flat.

To build market share in North America and Asia, we signed OEM agreements with Fujitsu Network Communications and Hitachi Ltd., respectively. And we launched the FSP 1500, our GFP next-gen SDH access solution

2001 In 2001, we completed construction of our state-of-the-art R&D, production and administration facility in Meiningen, Germany. This year, we also expanded our WDM product line and launched the FSP 1000 and FSP 2000. We also introduced the FSP Network Manager, and the FSP Network Planner.

FSP 2000

FSP 1000

2000 Like all young, aggressive engineers with money in their pockets, we decided to acquire some companies. We acquired Storage Area Networks Ltd. (Cambridge, U.K.); Cellware Breitband Technologie GmbH (Berlin, Germany); FirstFibre Ltd. (York, U.K.); and the Siemens Norway Telecom R&D Team (Oslo, Norway). Many dedicated employees from these early acquisitions are still with us today, continuing to innovate and deliver great products to market. We also launched our fourth generation of products and brought the FSP 3000 and FSP 500 to market.

FSP 3000

FSP 500

1999 Along came 1999, and with it the "Bubble." With the rest of the startups from that era, we had visions of becoming the dominant equipment provider in the telecommunications industry. We quickly realized that our small sales team was not going to be able to get global reach, so we decided to partner. In 1999, we signed an OEM partnership with Alcatel. In 2000, we closed OEM agreements with Cisco Systems and Siemens Communications.

We launched our third generation of products and brought the FSP-I and -II to market.

FSP-I

FSP-II

We also went public this year - what an amazing feeling. So many companies who launched during those years are no longer here. I am quite proud that ADVA Optical Networking is still going strong.

After about three loops and some hard falls, we climbed to the top of the roller coaster with the rest of the industry. It was the heyday of optical networking, and we were determined that our products were going to connect the world, including your refrigerator and your microwave. Our share price went up, up and away - we were valued more than Lufthansa!

1998 This year, we were proud to launch our second product generation, the Optical Channel Multiplexer (OCM) 4, 8 and 16. It's about this time I moved to a full-time position at ADVA Optical Networking.

OCM 4

OCM 8

OCM 16

1997 We were proud that our products worked well and started thinking about other markets. From our enterprise roots, we finally sold product to our first carrier customer, COLT, for whom we built inexpensive media converters.

1995 We launched our first product. A panicked data center manager at the Westfälische Landesbank (which no longer exists in the same corporate form) needed more dark fibers but couldn't get them from the Deutsche Bundespost. They convinced us to build the first ESCON multiplexer right around the same time that IBM began developing a competing product. Look at the size of a three-channel WDM product - it was market-leading at the time.

ESCON multiplexer

1994 We started out to conquer the world. This is the Robotron building in Meiningen, the former East Germany, which prior to 1989 was a major producer of hard drives and other technology solutions for the East. At the time, we could not afford to hire engineers in Munich due to cash restrictions and the inability to get subsidies. Thus we started in Meiningen with four people and a vision … to ADd VAlue ... ADVA Optical Networking was born.