OFC Closes in San Francisco with Increased Attendance, Larger Show Floor and a Week of World-Class Optical Networking and Communications Programming

SAN FRANCISCO, March 14, 2014—Amongst the 800 presentations, 550 exhibitors and 12,700 attendees, the 2014 OFC Conference and Exposition left the optical communications community with valuable insights into the latest research in the field, current products and services on the market today and future industry trends. Space-division multiplexing (SDM), silicon photonics, 1 Tb/s optical networking were hot topics on the technical side, while data centers, photonics integration, 100G+ coherent transmission and software-defined networking (SDN) were prominent topics on the exhibit side.

“OFC is the only place where professionals in the optical communications space can get an all inclusive look at every side of the industry,” said OFC 2014 General Co-Chair Ed Murphy of JDSU. “We say OFC is the most comprehensive event for optical networking and after a week like this, you can see it lives up to that designation. OFC is critical for anyone who wants to stay on top of the field and advance their career or business.”

Experts and Luminaries

Keynote speakers from the business side (Ciena CEO Gary Smith, MIT’s David Clark) as well as the technical side (Robert Tkach, Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs) provided unique perspectives on everything from network evolution to packet optical technologies to SDM.

Hot Topics & Current Trends

Visit any one of the dozens of show floor programs and buzz words such as SDN, 100G coherent, Gigabit Ethernet and silicon photonics could be heard at every level of the supply chain.  Panels on SDN explored monetization and virtualization, while workshops and technical papers looked at the viability of SDM for addressing the bandwidth capacity crunch.

Business News

Companies made news with more than 100 announcements in 100G coherent modules, optical transceivers for data centers, software-based solutions and more.  Analysts at “The Buzz” panel provided an insider’s perspective on the latest news coming out of the conference. “100G is here. 200G is happening and 400G is around the corner,” said moderator Julie Kunstler of Ovum. “Everything that was promised is here or on its way.”  Companies also provided insights through their participation in show floor programming such as Market Watch, covering 100G, data center architecture and PIC vs. Silicon Photonics, and Service Provider Summit, covering packet optical convergence and network evolution.

“Each year, OFC is the place to go to hear groundbreaking research from respected experts from academia and industry and to understand the latest business news and trends,” said AT&T’s Kathy Tse, 2014 OFC Program Co-Chair and 2015 OFC General Co-Chair. “This year we saw groups from around the world announcing the latest results in SDN, SDM and silicon photonics, among others.  There is something for everyone at OFC and I’m excited to keep this year’s momentum going as we head to Los Angeles in 2015.”

Join OFC in Los Angeles, Calif., USA for next year’s event, March 22 – 26, 2015 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

About OFC 

For more than 35 years, OFC has been the premier destination for converging breakthrough research and innovation in telecommunications, optical networking, fiber optics and, recently, datacom and computing. Consistently ranked in the top 200 tradeshows in the United States, and named one of the Fastest Growing Trade Shows in 2012 by TSNN, the conference unites service providers, systems companies, enterprise customers, IT businesses, and component manufacturers, with researchers, engineers, and development teams from around the world. OFC includes dynamic business programming, an exposition of more than 550 companies, and cutting-edge peer-reviewed research that, combined, showcase the trends and pulse of the entire optical networking and communications industry. OFC is managed by The Optical Society (OSA) and co-sponsored by OSA, the IEEE Communications Society (IEEE/ComSoc), and the IEEE Photonics Society.  OFC 2015 takes place March 22-26 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, California, USA.