Microsoft acquires hollow fiber vendor to optimize building global cloud infrastructure

On December 9, Microsoft announced that it has acquired Lumenisity® Corporation, a leader in next-generation hollow fiber (HCF) solutions [1].

01Microsoft Acquires Lumenisity to Optimize Cloud Services

Microsoft said the acquisition, the terms of which were not disclosed, will "expand [its] ability to further optimize its global cloud infrastructure" and "serve customers with stringent latency and security requirements for Microsoft cloud platforms and services.

Lumenisity's innovative and industry-leading HCF products enable fast, reliable and secure networks for global, enterprise and large organizations. The acquisition will expand Microsoft's ability to further optimize its global cloud infrastructure and serve customers with stringent latency and security requirements for Microsoft cloud platforms and services. The technology can bring benefits to a wide range of industries, including healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, retail and government.

02Lumenisity's HCF: a significant advantage

Lumenisity was founded in 2017 as a spin-off of the University of Southampton's world-renowned Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) to commercialize breakthroughs in hollow fiber development.In 2021 and 2022, the company's NANF® and CoreSmart® HCF optical cables won the European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC) Exhibition Industry Award for Best Fiber Optic Component Product.

Lumenisity's cable design diagram.

Lumenisity's next generation HCF features a proprietary design where light travels in a hollow fiber, which offers significant advantages over traditional fiber optic cables built with a solid core of glass, including

Increased overall speed and reduced latency as light propagates 47% faster in the HCF than in standard silica glass.

Enhanced security and intrusion detection due to Lumenisity's innovative internal structure.

Lower costs, increased bandwidth and higher network quality due to the elimination of fiber nonlinearity and wider spectrum

The potential for ultra-low signal loss allows for deployment over longer distances without the need for repeaters.

03The acquisition, which will build a shared vision

In a blog post, Girish Bablani, vice president of core business at Microsoft Azure, wrote [2], "HCF can bring benefits to a wide range of industries, including healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, retail and government. For the public sector, HCF can provide enhanced security and intrusion detection for federal and local governments around the world. In healthcare, because HCF can accommodate the size and volume of large data sets, it can help accelerate the retrieval of medical images and facilitate the ability of providers to ingest, preserve and share medical imaging data in the cloud. With the rise of the digital economy, HCF can help international financial institutions seeking fast, secure transactions across a wide geographic area."

"This is the end of the beginning, and we are excited to begin our new chapter as part of Microsoft to realize the full potential of this technology and continue our quest to unlock new capabilities in the communications network," Lumenisity wrote in a statement on its website, "We are proud to be acquired by a company with a shared vision that will accelerate our progress in the mid-air nuclear space."

Reference links：

[1]https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2022/12/09/microsoft-acquires-lumenisity-an-innovator-in-hollow-core-fiber-hcf-cable/

[2]https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/09/microsoft-acquires-startup-developing-high-speed-cables-for-transmitting-data/