Transforming the transceiver business  

Q Please can you provide some brief background on the

company to date?
A ProLabs is a leading compatible optical infrastructure provider that has been trading since 2004 and has since invested heavily in staff, systems and operational facilities.
Q Who are the key personnel involved?
A As a global player we have staff located across the EMEA region, the US and Asia which affords us the ability to provide real-time support for our customers. Our senior management team is shared between Europe and the US. The European team consists of myself, as CEO; Steve Burke, VP of EMEA & Asia Sales; Christian Rookes, Director of Product Management; and Giacomo Losio, Head of Technology. In the US, we have Ward Williams, CCO; Joe Tordy, VP of US Carrier Sales; and Andy Smith, VP Business Development. Selina Liu has recently joined ProLabs as Channel & Supply Chain Director in Asia.
Q What have been the key milestones?
A Although a considerable amount has happened since our demerger in 2013 and now, it is the last 12 months that have been the most exciting for us. In March this year, we signed a major deal to move - later this year - into a new, purpose-built testing facility in Cirencester. The new site represents a significant moment in the history of the company and will provide us with state of the art operational infrastructure as befits our global ambitions.
The hirings of Christian and Giacomo, (ex HP and Cisco respectively), also represent key milestones. Both have extensive industry leading experience, highlighting our stated aim to increase our technological astuteness and to focus on innovation. With Christian and Giacomo on board, we are better equipped than ever before to look towards more ambitious projects such as the upcoming launch of our 100G product line and the development of our Multi-Vendor Compatible Transceivers and High Speed cables.
Furthermore, we are proud to say that in June this year, we extended our partnership agreement with the global networking giant Mellanox on a new range of Coded Compatible Direct Attachment Cable (DAC) solutions. Non-Mellanox switches have long required the DAC to be coded with authenticated information to enable interoperability and customer choice in the data centre, which had previously been unachievable for Mellanox. This new combined solution solves this problem and is 100 per cent compatible with vendors including Cisco, Arista and Juniper.
Q What are the key USPs that ProLabs aims to bring to the data
centre market?
A Interoperability, reliability and affordability – this is our mantra and that is what ProLabs is all about! As a leading compatible products provider, we ensure that the first two criteria are met through rigorous testing procedures. We believe so strongly in our products that we became the first provider in the optical engineering industry to offer lifetime warranties on the vast majority of them – a trend subsequently copied by others in the industry.
We believe fundamentally that high quality optical engineering products do not and should not cost the earth – we pride ourselves on providing such products at affordable prices.
We also stress the importance of speed, both in the delivery of our products and support for our distributors, resellers and end-users. Our overnight delivery and immediate response capabilities on product related issues - at a time when market leading OEMs can take weeks or even longer to address – have proved extremely popular with customers worldwide.
Q I guess the claim to be ‘challenging OEM dominance’ is a key
differentiator?
A Yes, definitely. ProLabs is seeking to change the data centre and networking mindset by challenging the perception that OEMs are the only way to guarantee quality. Our partnerships with global technology companies that also strive for interoperability are another key differentiator. I would argue that we are the only company in our segment that matches the OEMs in ambition – in our product lines, partnerships, distribution and technical expertise.
Q Presumably this message is being well-received in this era of
openness?
A We believe so, yes! Interestingly, we conducted a survey at ECOC in Cannes last year and found that although, historically, ‘brand’ had been uppermost in the minds of data centre procurers, the vast majority of them now consider price to be a more important consideration.
Q Although some still have concerns over the compatible product
market?
A Naturally - this is one of the biggest challenges we face, and of course, it’s understandable. Not all compatible product providers have the reliability or quality control to ensure against disaster and so it is perfectly reasonable for buyers to be wary.
However, we have worked hard to show ourselves as not just another compatibles company by putting our reputation on the line and – as mentioned – being the first to offer lifetime warranties on everything we provide. At the end of the day, our client list and client experiences speak for themselves – we’re selling ProLabs products that we know and are proven to be reliable.
Q Please can you provide a brief overview of the ProLabs
product portfolio?
A We provide transceivers, direct attach cables (DAC), active optical cables (AOC), media converters, fibre cables; as well as bespoke length cable. I think it is fair to say that our core product set is our coded transceivers, media converter and DAC offering.
Q And then tell us a little bit about the transceivers?
A We offer an extensive range of optical and copper transceivers to fit our customers’ requirements. All transceivers are standards-based and comply with the MSA (Multi-Source Agreement), ranging from 100BASE-FX to 40Gb products and cover optical and copper transceivers such as GBIC, SFP, Xenpak, X2, XFP, SFP+ and QSFP.
Using our technology, our transceivers are individually coded to work flawlessly alongside which ever OEM switches they are required to couple with.
Q And the direct attach cables?
A ProLabs provides both copper and fibre DACs, which can be coded separately at either end. This means that the end-user is not tied to one OEM provider and is free to connect up numerous vendors’ products.
What we have effectively done is taken the technology we have used in our transceivers, and applied it to each end of our DACs. Our customers can connect different – previously incompatible - vendor switches together with 100% interoperability and error free performance.
We have just launched the Mellanox LinkX Direct Attach Cable product line in partnership with Mellanox. This provides existing Mellanox switch and adaptor card customers with an interoperability solution in multi-vendor sites that they were locked out of. This lowers costs and improves customer choice with the benefit of high speed, low latency cables and also fits well with both ProLabs and Mellanox’s foundational objectives.
Q And the other cabling products?
A The physical media of a data centre may be its simplest part but – like everything else in the chain – its reliability is critical. We offer bespoke and dependable fibre optic cables, so our customers can sleep easy in the knowledge that their data centres are going to run smoothly.
Q And the media converters?
A We provide true multi-rate devices, supporting 10/100/1000 on copper and 100/1000 (dependant on SFP) on the fibre side. By inserting the relevant SFP pluggable optic, the network can be extended over fibre, even where bidirectional or specific WDM wavelengths are required.
Q In general, do you think specifiers have sufficient knowledge of
what can appear to be quite a mundane part of the overall data
centre infrastructure jigsaw?
A This is great question and is certainly a concern of ours. To address this we have started working with Anixter, a global distributor that specialise in Data Centre infrastructure build outs. Anixter are specialists in creating a Bill Of Materials (BOM) for data centre operators and integrators that assist them in saving material costs and providing expert logistical support. We see this new development as perfect way to improve the data centre operators knowledge and acceptance of our products and services.
Q Can you provide an example or two where customers have
understood, and benefitted from what you have to offer for the
data centre?
A A proportion of our business comes from the public sector where demand for reliable optical infrastructure is abundant, but unfortunately, funding is not. In this area we are able to work alongside and provide institutions with top quality data centre parts at affordable prices.
Oakgrove School in Milton Keynes, England, for instance, needed to upgrade its network infrastructure but did not have the budget to go for top of the range OEM products. The school turned instead to ProLabs and made significant costs savings compared to the OEM transceivers. Paru Thanki, the School’s ICT Network Manager, reported that the products were 100 per cent compatible and that they had not experienced a single fault. They stated that even if the school had the budget to invest in OEM products, they would only have wasted money by doing so.
Q You recently announced the Velocity for ProLabs Channel
initiative. Can you tell us what this is?
A It is an incentive programme that rewards our European resellers for driving sales of ProLabs products and creating opportunities for the company.
We give our resellers access to an online portal in which they can log any sales and opportunities created. This banks reward points that can then be spent in the online rewards store. Rewards can range from technology, to food and drink and experience days.
Q And you recently signed up Exertis in the UK? How does this
fit into your overall Channel strategy?
A We did - we were delighted to announce our relationship with Exertis earlier this year. We have recently been concentrating a lot of our efforts towards global expansion; moving into different continents and becoming a truly global company. Working with Exertis has given us the opportunity to reinforce our presence in Europe alongside our existing partners.
Exertis is Europe’s fastest growing technology distributor and we are very happy to be working with such a capable operator, whose ambitions, we feel, reflect our own.
Q Indeed, where are you in terms of your Channel growth/ coverage right now?
A Going from one distributor to 10 globally is a 1000 per cent increase in one year, which – and it goes without saying – is a rather significant growth spurt! This now means that we have market penetration in EMEA, the U.S., Latin America, Japan, Southeast Asia and China; with Australasia on the horizon.
We are also looking to push heavily into the Pan-Asian market which will become more evident toward Q3 and 4 of this year – keep your eyes peeled!
Q Everyone is talking about Cloud, Big Data and the Internet of
Things. Is it possible to make ProLabs relevant to these buzz
topics, or do you have to sit on the side lines?!
A It is all too easy to forget that these major developments rely on expansive data centre infrastructure and thus, as the demand for them grows, so will the demand for reliable, affordable optical infrastructure equipment. The current market leaders are too expensive to satisfy this need and so demand is only going to increase for affordable high quality alternatives.
Although the current focus tends to be on the technology itself, all of these major technological developments rely fundamentally on advancements in optical technology.

With ProLabs working towards faster optical capabilities such as 100G and mulit-vendor solutions, we will be very well placed to discuss the fast, affordable, and quality infrastructure which the newer technologies will demand.
Q What (other) data centre developments are driving ProLabs R&D
at the moment?
A I have mentioned Multi-Vendor coded optics. This development will have a significant positive impact on the flexibility, manageability and cost of the data centre build. Our ability to provide one optical module that can be used with up to three different vendor switches will transform the transceiver business.

This means that in a multi-vendor environment - say with Juniper, Cisco and Arista switches installed - an operator would usually want
to hold some spares of, for example, 1Gig multi-mode transceivers from each of these vendors. Our solution will allow the operator to hold one transceiver that will work with all three switches in plug and
play application. You can imagine the appeal of this solution in
terms of simplified stock holding, flexibility, time and network management.