Polatis To Unveil New Standalone Optical Switching Solution At OFC 2008

Polatis To Unveil New Standalone Optical Switching Solution At OFC 2008


Solution developed to meet needs of major Test & Measurement customers

Billerica, MA., Cambridge, UK – February 26, 2008 – Polatis Inc., a supplier of high performance optical switch technologies, today announced the launch of its new line of touch screen optical switch products at OFC 2008, taking place this week at the San Diego Convention Center, California, USA.

The powerful new line of products include both the touch screen display optical switch (OSD), and the touch screen display optical switch with integrated power meter and VOA functionality (VSD) product. These products enable stand-alone front panel operation of all major switching functions, without the need for network connectivity or external devices. Operated through an intuitive page-driven graphical user interface, the front panel supports setting port connections, saving and recalling configurations, setting the device IP address, querying optical power, and attenuating signals.

“The quality and performance of Polatis optical switches has made them the industry standard for production test and lab automation,” said Dr. Aaron Bent, VP Sales and Marketing at Polatis. “We added the ability for full-featured local control, based specifically on the feedback from customers of the world’s leading network equipment manufacturers and carriers, and those of our worldwide distribution partner JDSU.”

The OSD and VSD products are ideal for lab and production environments, wherever high performance, reliability, and feature-rich automation tools are required for optical test. The new products provide simultaneous remote management and local operation, for applications including: systems verification testing (SVT), production test automation, interoperability labs, and carrier network span emulation.

Gegs Jones, Group PLM Lead at JDSU said, “High quality communications test equipment, working in concert with automation tools such as the Polatis switch, are more important now than ever before as equipment vendors and carriers are under increasing pressure to deliver the highest quality product or service, quicker, and at lower cost. We have worked closely with Polatis to define this requirement, and they have introduced a next generation product that meets the needs of our customers, and will greatly improve our product offering.”

Like all Polatis optical switches the OSD and VSD switch fabrics deliver ultra-low loss, high optical repeatability, high optical signal stability and minimal polarization dependent loss. They are bi-directional, fully non-blocking, protocol and bit rate independent, and can handle high optical powers or switching dark fiber.

The new VSD touch screen optical switch product will be on display at the Polatis booth (#2615), along with 7 other operating demonstrations showcasing products in use for telecom operator networks. Polatis offers a broad range of products in single mode and multimode fiber, and in formats that include tray, module, and cPCI card-based products.

Polatis products, including the Optical Switch Tray (OST) product, will also be on display in the JDSU booth (#2021/3139), Polatis partner and worldwide distributor for products in the test market.