1. IHS TECHNOLOGY
Optical Network Hardware
Vendor Scorecard Excerpts
4 May 2016 ihs.com

2. IHS TECHNOLOGY | Optical Network Hardware Vendor Scorecard Excerpts
IHS
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TECHNOLOGY
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Contents
Top Takeaways 1
Detailed Scorecard Analysis 3
Vendor Profile: Infinera 4
Portfolio 5
Market Presence and Market Momentum Highlights 5
Bottom Line 5
Methodology 6
Portfolio and Market Segment Covered 6
Scorecard Criteria 6
Reports Used 7
Exhibits
Exhibit 1 Optical Leadership Landscape Graph 2
Exhibit 2 Optical Equipment Leadership Scores 3
Exhibit 3 Infinera Optical Profile 4

3. IHS TECHNOLOGY | Optical Network Hardware Vendor Scorecard Excerpts
© 2016 IHS 1 4 May 2016
Top Takeaways
The only report of its kind, this Scorecard evaluates the top optical hardware vendors on criteria using actual data and
metrics, including direct feedback from buyers, vendor market share, market share momentum, financials, brand
recognition, reputation for innovation, and other benchmarks. This approach eliminates subjectivity and ensures
vendors are assessed accurately and fairly.
There are over a dozen vendors around the globe that make and sell optical equipment. The 10 vendors profiled in this
Scorecard—ADVA, Ciena, Cisco, Coriant, ECI, Fujitsu, Huawei, Infinera, Nokia, and ZTE—were selected because
they are the top revenue producers of optical hardware. The purpose of this Scorecard is to analyze the relative
strengths among these market leaders.
In this Scorecard, we classify vendors as leader, established, or challenger depending on their overall score; the 10
profiled vendors are grouped as follows:
• Leaders: Ciena, Huawei, Infinera, and Nokia
• Established: Cisco and ZTE
• Challengers: ADVA, Coriant, ECI, and Fujitsu
Bottom line: The overall optical equipment market has fractured into two groups; one is traditional service providers
and the other is competitive service providers and Internet content providers. Leaders either focus on one of these
markets or have the necessary scale to address both with independent solutions. Challengers are typically focused on
one of these markets and carve out a specific category to control. Established players are tasked largely with defending
a broad installed base by guiding existing customers through technology and architectural transitions.

4. IHS TECHNOLOGY | Optical Network Hardware Vendor Scorecard Excerpts
© 2016 IHS 2 4 May 2016
Exhibit 1 Optical Leadership Landscape Graph
Source: IHS © 2016 IHS
Please see “Methodology” (excerpted methodology is at the end of this document; the full version, with a more detailed
description of the scoring process, is available from IHS).

5. IHS TECHNOLOGY | Optical Network Hardware Vendor Scorecard Excerpts
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Detailed Scorecard Analysis
The chart below summarizes the 10 vendors’ scores in market presence and market momentum and places them into
one of 3 categories: leaders, established players, and challengers. The presence and momentum scores range between a
minimum of 1.0 and maximum of 5.0; the average score is 3.0.
• Leaders perform strongly across all evaluation criteria and vectors. Leaders have established a significant
presence in the market and have positive momentum, which means they are likely to cement and expand their
leadership positions in the future.
• Established players perform strongly in the market presence vector. Though established players have lower
market momentum than leaders, their significant presence indicates strong adoption of their solutions.
• Challengers perform strongly in the market momentum vector. Though challengers have lower market
presence than leaders, their positive momentum indicates they are in a good position to grow their market
presence in the future.
Exhibit 2 Optical Equipment Leadership Scores
Source: IHS © 2016 IHS
Leaders Established Challengers
ADVA
#9 Presence: 2.3
#4 Momentum: 3.2
ECI
#10 Presence: 1.9
#6 Momentum: 3.1
Coriant
#8 Presence: 2.4
#8 Momentum: 2.8
Fujitsu
#7 Presence: 2.5
#7 Momentum: 2.9
Cisco
#3 Presence: 3.5
#9 Momentum: 2.6
ZTE
#6 Presence: 2.8
#10 Momentum: 2.4
Ciena
#2 Presence: 3.5
#2 Momentum: 3.8
Infinera
#5 Presence: 3.5
#1 Momentum: 3.9
Huawei
#1 Presence: 4.3
#3 Momentum: 3.4
Nokia
#4 Presence: 3.5
#5 Momentum: 3.1

6. IHS TECHNOLOGY | Optical Network Hardware Vendor Scorecard Excerpts
© 2016 IHS 4 4 May 2016
Vendor Profile: Infinera
Infinera was founded in 2000, just as the telecom market was imploding due to carrier overcapacity and overinvestment
by equipment/component vendors. The company designed its equipment and network architecture based on the concept
of using indium phosphide-based (InP) photonic integration to reduce the cost of optical/electric conversion. The
availability of this cheaper and denser regeneration capability allowed the construction of denser systems and enabled
network architectures that were easier to provision and allowed services to be deployed faster. In August 2015, Infinera
completed its acquisition of Transmode, boosting the position of Infinera in metro, packet-optical, and EMEA markets
and addressing all the challenges we outlined in the 2015 version of this Scorecard.
Exhibit 3 Infinera Optical Profile
Note: The market presence and market momentum scores are described fully in “Methodology.”
Source: IHS © 2016 IHS
Optical Equipment Revenue
$855M
Score
Market presence: 3.5
Market momentum: 3.9
Strengths
Data center interconnect
Market share momentum
Service and support
Challenges
Business in Asia
Leader

7. IHS TECHNOLOGY | Optical Network Hardware Vendor Scorecard Excerpts
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Portfolio
Infinera has deep expertise in InP design and fabrication and is vertically integrated with silicon technology for
coherent transmission. The strength of the company lies in the resulting characteristics of its products. When customers
are asked what Infinera does well, the photonic integrated circuit (PIC) technology is not mentioned, but rather the ease
of operation and provisioning of the systems as well as reliability that is higher than that of optical systems constructed
with discrete technology.
The history of the company can be traced by following the arc of its internally developed InP based photonic
integration. The company’s first product—the DTN—was designed around its first production PIC. When introduced,
it had industry leading density of 10x 10G per line card coupled with a fabric that foreshadowed the future OTN
compliant fabrics of other vendors. Later, the company developed a 10x 40G PIC that was subsequently repurposed to
10x 50G when the company correctly recognized that the 40G market would be short-lived. The upgraded PIC forms
the heart of the DTN-X system that uses dual-carrier 50G signals to carry 100G and has a line card capacity of 500G,
coupled with a more extensible OTN switch architecture. In March 2016, Infinera announced its next gen flex coherent
processor and 4th generation PIC, named the Infinite Capacity Engine. It can be configured to support different
applications: from 600G (12x50G) of capacity at subsea distances up to 2.4T (12x200G) for the metro. Infinera has not
yet disclosed which platforms will support the new technologies, but it expects to make further announcements before
the end of the year.
With the 2015 acquisition of Transmode, Infinera now has a metro portfolio and customer base and a play into the
emerging mobile fronthaul market. Time will tell if and how these assets will be evolved to leverage the new PIC
technology that provides an interesting approach for on-demand wavelength services. Although early to market with
the Cloud Express (CX), a platform optimized for data center interconnect (DCI), most of the other leading optical
vendors have since brought similar offerings to market, making this an intensely competitive segment.
Market Presence and Market Momentum Highlights
Infinera has excellent scores across the board and is a market leader despite its smaller size. The acquisition of
Transmode has boosted its packet-optical revenue. This plus increases in market share and a customer perception of
leadership in technology innovation earn the company a top score in momentum.
The company achieved its strong market presence score not through bulk—it is 5th in worldwide equipment market
share—but with excellent scores from customers. The company’s financial score is healthier than all but one of its
competitors. But what really raises its market presence score is excellent product reliability and service and support
scores from customers.
Bottom Line
Infinera is reaping the benefits of its unique approach of being a completely vertically integrated provider of coherent
100G solutions and using them to build systems perfectly suited to the needs of DCI and competitive carriers. The
Transmode acquisition was a great strategic fit that plugged the few remaining portfolio gaps in areas such as metro
access and packet-optical. Though it is not the largest vendor, it has used its agility to hunt and take down emerging
market niches like DCI while winning the trust of customers.

8. IHS TECHNOLOGY | Optical Network Hardware Vendor Scorecard Excerpts
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Methodology
Portfolio and Market Segment Covered
The optical portfolio and market segment analyzed for this Scorecard include:
• Optical network hardware: equipment used to build WDM- and SONET/SDH-based optical transport
networks
• P-OTS: Optical equipment designed and used for hybrid circuit and packet based transport; used to construct
optical transport networks capable of OSI layers 0-2 features allowing customers to transition features as
requirements change; smaller systems in the metro edge category are more focused on Ethernet UNI,
aggregation, and transport features, whereas metro regional systems focus more on layer 0 optical and layer 1
circuit switching and transport while retaining layer 2 switching features
Scorecard Criteria
This Scorecard includes the 10 top optical vendors by revenue for 2015, each with $290M or more in 2015 optical
revenue. We did not include the next tier of players, such as Adtran, NEC, TE Connectivity, and Padtec. The methods
used to address mergers and acquisitions over the year are outlined at the end of this section.
Our criteria are based on actual data and metrics. For each criterion, we scored vendors on a 5-point scale; 1 is the
lowest possible score, 3 is an average score, and 5 is a perfect score. Specifically, we evaluate vendors on market
presence and market momentum.
Market presence: a company’s current position in the market, including size, brand recognition, reputation, and
financials. The market presence score is calculated using these criteria:
• Market share: a vendor’s percentage share of the optical revenue
• Financials: an analysis of a vendor’s financials; a strong financial position improves long-term viability and
allows a company to stay ahead of the competition by investing in R&D and/or acquiring other
companies/technologies; this score is based on the Altman Z-score non-manufacturing model
• Buyer feedback: an assessment of a vendor’s performance by optical purchase decision-makers, based on
interviews we conduct with global service providers every year
• Product reliability: buyers’ assessments of a vendor’s product reliability
• Service and support: buyers’ assessments of a vendor’s service and support

9. IHS TECHNOLOGY | Optical Network Hardware Vendor Scorecard Excerpts
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Market momentum: a company’s potential, including growth, reputation for innovation, and development of next
generation technologies. The market momentum score is calculated using these criteria:
• Market share momentum: a vendor’s growth in the optical market (revenue)
• Packet-optical intensity: Packet-optical intensity measures the portion of the portfolio that is the most
advanced equipment; this is a measure of the percentage of a vendor's product portfolio designed to meet the
evolving requirements of customers, and whether the vendor is capitalizing on new, high growth market
segments
• Buyer feedback on technology innovation: an assessment of a vendor’s performance by optical purchase
decision-makers, based on interviews we conduct with global service providers every year
Based on the scores for each of the 7 criteria, we created 2 composite vendor scores, one for market presence and the
other for market momentum, using the same 5-point scale, and weight the individual criterion based on its importance
in the buying process.
Reports Used
The information in this Scorecard is based on findings from multiple IHS services, including:
• Market share, size, and forecasts
• Optical Network Hardware
• OTN and Packet-Optical Hardware
• Survey-based research: Optical Equipment Vendor Leadership

10. IHS TECHNOLOGY | Optical Network Hardware Vendor Scorecard Excerpts
© 2016 IHS 8 4 May 2016
Heidi Adams
Senior Research Director, Transport Networks
+1 408.583.3388
Heidi.Adams@ihs.com
Alex Green
Director, Technology, Media, and Telecom
+44 1933408065
Alex.Green@ihs.com
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