Blackboard deploys Infinera Cloud Xpress

NEW DELHI: Infinera, provider of Intelligent Transport Networks, announced that Blackboard, a company dealing in education technology, has deployed the Infinera Cloud Xpress to interconnect three US datacenters to enhance their ability to deliver online education services.

Blackboard is focused on leveraging technology and services in order to re-imagine education and make it more accessible, engaging and relevant to the modern day learner.

Blackboard chose Infinera's Cloud Xpress, with its small form factor, low power consumption solution, and coupled it with Infinera's Instant Bandwidth solution that is designed scale bandwidth in 100 gigabits per second (Gb/s) increments without changes in hardware.

Through Infinera's Cloud Xpress, Blackboard will be able to deliver educational services to learners and the institutions that serve them, by providing up to one terabit per second (Tb/s) of input and output capacity in just two rack units (RU).

Further, Cloud Xpress is designed to streamline operations and offer appliance-like simplicity, which includes a single fiber to deliver a 500 Gb/s super-channel of line-side capacity, a highly-reliable photonic integrated circuit and the flexibility of 10 gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and 40 GbE, and 100 GbE client side interfaces.

The ultra-low power and rack-and-stack form factor of Cloud Xpress enables Blackboard to scale while using small amounts of space and power which is a key consideration in today’s datacenters. In addition, the Cloud Xpress is designed with a new software approach that allows it to plug into existing Cloud provisioning systems using open software-defined networking (SDN) application programming interfaces (APIs). Similar to the server and storage infrastructure currently deployed in the Cloud, the Cloud Xpress is designed to integrate into existing operational processes and to enable Cloud providers to scale quickly and simplify operations.

"As we introduce higher quality video, audio and other new technology to offer the most comprehensive teaching and learning solutions for our customers, we needed to progressively scale our network to support the dramatic growth in data," said Peter George, Senior Vice President of Product Development at Blackboard. "We selected the Infinera Cloud Xpress for this metro Cloud because of its ability to grow capacity quickly, incrementally and without any significant overhaul in our network."

"The tremendous growth in bandwidth is impacting every part of the datacenter ecosystem," said Stu Elby, Senior Vice President, Cloud network strategy and technology, Infinera. "Blackboard's deployment of Cloud Xpress further underscores the need for simple, highly scalable datacenter interconnect solutions across a variety of markets," he added.