Rockley Photonics has been recognised by leading analyst firm, Frost & Sullivan, for its ground breaking R&D in networking infrastructure technology. Dr Andrew Rickman, Rockley’s founder and CEO, will receive the prestigious Frost & Sullivan 2017 Global Technology Innovation Award for Data Center Networking Infrastructure at a ceremony in London on 14th March.
The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT), connected living and artificial intelligence is set to dramatically increase the demand for cloud services and faster computing capabilities within data centers. Rockley’s integrated networking technology is designed to enable large data centers to upscale their networking infrastructure so that the projected growth in compute power can be met.
Experts have suggested that data traffic in cloud data centers may require 1000 times more bandwidth than that deployed today in order to keep up with demand for internet services over the next 10 years.
According to Frost & Sullivan, Rockley is poised to play a transformational role in the future design of ‘hyper-scale’ data centers.
“The shear level of Rockley’s technology integration is expected to be the first in the industry and will undoubtedly provide a glimpse of future networking technology,” commented Frost & Sullivan Senior Research Analyst Jabez Mendelson.
Mendelson continued: “Rockley has demonstrated its ability to combine photonics and electronics in a unique architecture, which will enable it to simplify switch design, create vastly more scalable networks using much larger switches, and drive down the cost per bit while substantially reducing power consumption.”
However, the company did not stop at this major feat alone. It has embraced and addressed all the major issues facing hyper-scale data center operators, including both software support and hardware reference designs. It has developed a reference software stack allowing customers to use their preferred programmable SDN network software control plane. Rockley has also developed hardware reference designs that customers can transfer directly to their preferred ODM partner to produce whitebox switches with very high density optical I/O. The combination of these reference designs provides a complete data center infrastructure solution.
Mendelson concluded: “It was the complete visionary application and solution combined with the technology attributes and future business value that strongly contributed to Rockley Photonics’ success in achieving this award.”
