Fiber Optics

II-VI buys CoAdna, a maker of liquid-crystal wavelength selective switches for ROADMs

March 29, 2018

II-VI Incorporated will acquire CoAdna for approximately $85 million.

II-VI Incorporated (Saxonburg, PA; NASDAQ:IIVI) will acquire CoAdna (Sunnyvale, CA) for approximately $85 million and should close the deal in the 3rd calendar quarter of 2018. CoAdna was founded in 2000 as a manufacturer of wavelength selective switches (WSS) based on its LightFlow liquid crystal platform and II-VI’s micro-optics.

The company’s WSS modules have been deployed in the field for many years, and integrated with II-VI’s optical amplifiers, optical channel monitors, and other components on reconfigurable optical add-drop multipler (ROADM) line cards designed by II-VI, CoAdna, and their customers.

“CoAdna and II-VI have been great business partners for many years, leveraging each other’s complementary products and technologies to serve the optical transport market,” said Sunny Sun, President of the Photonics Segment of II-VI. “We are well positioned for the growth in ROADM demand driven by metro network upgrades, new datacenter interconnect architectures, and the emerging 5G wireless infrastructure.”

Related: Optical technologies scale the datacenter – 2012 article explaining datacenter architecture and needs by Google engineers

Source: II-VI Incorporated

About the Author

Conard Holton | Editor at Large

Conard Holton has 25 years of science and technology editing and writing experience. He was formerly a staff member and consultant for government agencies such as the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and the International Atomic Energy Agency, and engineering companies such as Bechtel. He joined Laser Focus World in 1997 as senior editor, becoming editor in chief of WDM Solutions, which he founded in 1999. In 2003 he joined Vision Systems Design as editor in chief, while continuing as contributing editor at Laser Focus World. Conard became editor in chief of Laser Focus World in August 2011, a role in which he served through August 2018. He then served as Editor at Large for Laser Focus World and Co-Chair of the Lasers & Photonics Marketplace Seminar from August 2018 through January 2022. He received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, with additional studies at the Colorado School of Mines and Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.