Cisco’s Acacia division and DriveNets have integrated the latter’s Network Cloud platform to work within the former’s 400G ZR/ZR+ optical modules in a move that converges layer 1 and layer 3 components into a standard white-box optical networking appliance.

The integration eliminates the need for standalone optical transponders, which can lower the number of boxes needed and reduce operational costs and footprint. The integration also ensures that DriveNets-powered modules can be managed by the corresponding Network Cloud software. This includes configuration, monitoring and troubleshooting.

Dudy Cohen, VP of product marketing for DriveNets, told SDxCentral in an interview that the deal is significant as ZR+ optical modules “have specific optic capabilities and specific optic configuration and monitoring is required that needs to be supported by the software and not just accommodated by the hardware.”

Cohen explained this support includes specific hardware and software configurations to manage the signal frequency, the channel width and transmit power.

“This is exactly what we did. We completed the entire scope of configuration and monitoring capabilities in our software,” Cohen said. “If you plug in a ZR+ from Acacia into a white box, you are free from the adjacent optical layer chassis that you typically use in a central office. Once you put the ZR+ into the white box, then the router that runs our software over the white box with ZR+ capabilities is true layer 1 to layer 3 capable with all the switching and routing capabilities that we already have, but also all the optical capabilities that we are able to configure and monitor on the Acacia optics.”

DriveNets launched its Network Cloud product in late 2022. The platform is a disaggregated distributed chassis/backbone router (DDC/DDBR) that supports ZR/ZR+ optics as native transceivers and can be used in any white box designed to support the platform. Those white boxes include models from UfiSpace and Edgecore, and transceivers from vendors like Coherent, Fujitsu, NEC and Acacia.

Cohen said this model allows DriveNets to “maintain the independence of the vendor selection process that the operator used to have when the DWDM (dense wavelength-division multiplexing) functionality was separate from the routing functionality and you simply chose two different vendors. You can still choose two different vendors but get them in a single box and single management.”

DriveNets has already deployed the Acacia product with a customer but is also working with other module vendors to provide similar capabilities.

“This one is the most advanced in terms of the configuration granularity and the monitoring capabilities we went with in terms of those optical vendors, but there are no specific capabilities that can be run on only Acacia,” Cohen added. “It's simply a matter of customer priorities and which customer needed it first. This is the deepest integration we've done so far, but we are in the process of doing similar things with other vendors as well.”

DriveNets CMO Inbar Lasser-Raab added that the Acacia integration targets deployments supporting use cases like the network edge, edge aggregation and metro edge. The vendor is also seeing traction with the growing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI).

DriveNets last year unveiled an AI-enhanced version of its Network Cloud product that uses Ethernet, rather than InfiniBand, to connect large numbers of AI-optimized systems in a distributed cluster. DriveNets said the Network Cloud-AI technology can connect up to 32,000 GPUs together in an AI cluster, with bandwidth connectivity of up to 800G.

“We kind of stumbled into the AI market at the beginning of 2023,” Lasser-Raab said. “Initially, we thought we're not a switch company, but what we found out when a couple of hyperscalers came to us to test our solution, they realized that the way we build the fabric for the router, the way we can scale a router fabric to many white boxes, really created the highest performance switch in the market and the fabric itself is a high performance switch.

"They tested us as an AI networking solution and we showed them the best result in terms of job completion time, between 10% to 30% better than other solutions. Because of the nature of the fabric, we don't drop packets and the switching is done internally in the fabric, so it's very quick.”

DriveNets has also garnered attention as part of AT&T’s extensive network disaggregation efforts. The carrier is using the DriveNets' Network Cloud platform to provide a software-based core routing technology.

AT&T said this open disaggregated core routing platform was carrying 52% of the carrier’s traffic at the end of 2022.

The DriveNets integration also further bolsters Cisco’s Acacia operations.

Cisco acquired Acacia for $4.5 billion in early 2021. The long-simmering deal was initially valued at $2.6 billion, but was delayed after the Chinese government’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) refused to approve the acquisition.

The delay eventually pushed toward an initial closing deadline, which resulted in some legal wrangling between Cisco and Acacia. That tussle was eventually settled thanks to an additional $1.9 billion tacked onto the purchase price.

The deal propelled Cisco toward the top of the optical vendor landscape and has been a big part of Cisco’s ongoing “internet of the future” framework that includes its Silicon One programmable silicon architecture, converged SDN transport and network automation.

“Acacia has been a terrific acquisition for us,” Bill Gartner, SVP and GM for Cisco’s optical systems and optical business unit, told SDxCentral in a recent interview. “We’re really pleased with their execution. They’ve had a great history of executing on technology transitions and they’ve continued that as they’ve come into Cisco.”