Calient raises $19.4 million to move MEMS photonics switching to Internet data centers

Santa Barbara, CA--Photonic switching developer Calient Technologies has raised a $19.4 million round of venture financing from a combination of new and existing internal investors. The new funding will be used to expand into data center and cloud computing markets and to finalize development of its new portfolio of 3D MEMS photonic switching systems and modules for OEMs and system integration partners.

With the new financing in place, Calient will bring to market a new family of modular photonic switching systems and subsystems targeted for enterprise and cloud data centers as well as existing applications such as subsea cable and government networks. In these applications, the company's switches provide highly scalable, almost future-proof, capacity as networks grow in speed from 10 Gbit/s to 40 and 100 Gbit/s. The new product line will also be more modular, power-efficient, and lower in cost, allowing the company to pursue new markets and enable other networking vendors to embed photonic switching into their systems.

In Calient's new product line, the company's 3D optical MEMS technology will provide smaller form-factor, reduced power consumption, and low cost in switching technology, allowing enterprise and cloud computing data centers to cost-effectively deploy photonic switching solutions for the first time. In these applications, the switches optimize resource utilization by reconfiguring high-bandwidth connectivity within and between data center sites to support time of day or instantaneous demand variations, or disaster recovery scenarios.

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