Microsoft has acquired Lumenisity, a provider of hollow fiber solutions, an acquisition designed to expand Microsoft's ability to further optimize its global cloud infrastructure and provide stringent latency and security requirements for Microsoft's cloud platform and services customers. Lumenisity was founded in 2017 as a division of the Optoelectronics Research Centre at the University of Southampton, UK. The aim is to commercialize breakthroughs in hollow fiber development. The company's CoreSmart nested antiresonant nodeless fiber (NANF) hollow fiber has been tested and is used by network operators, including BT and Comcast, in their networks.
Hollow fiber can also provide benefits to a range of industries, including healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, retail and government. Organizations within these industries can benefit because they rely on networks and data centers that require high-speed transactions, enhanced security, increased bandwidth and high-capacity communications. For the public sector, the hollow core can provide enhanced security and intrusion detection for federal and local governments worldwide. In healthcare, because the hollow core can accommodate the size and capacity of large data sets, it can help accelerate medical image retrieval and facilitate the ability of providers to ingest, preserve and share medical image data in the cloud. With the rise of the digital economy, it can help international financial institutions seeking fast, secure transactions across a wide geographic area.
Lumenisity's next-generation hollow fiber features a proprietary design where light travels in a hollow core, providing higher overall speeds and lower latency, as well as enhanced security and intrusion detection. With the elimination of fiber nonlinearity and a wider spectrum, other benefits include reduced costs, increased bandwidth and improved network quality, and the potential for ultra-low signal loss, enabling longer-range deployments without repeaters. Microsoft plans to leverage Lumenisity's technology and industry-leading team of experts to accelerate innovation in networking and infrastructure.
