The metropolis of Frankfurt is not always an expensive place to be. Sure, rents for real estate are high - no question about it. But what about the rent for fiber optics? Surprisingly enough, in Frankfurt they are in the moderate mid-range compared to other cities and regions.
Nevertheless, anyone thinking about saving money on this field may consider a DWDM technology made in Germany to transmit data. Why? Let's take a closer look. Thanks to WDM technology, our customer will no longer pay 2.16 million euros over 5 years, but only 90,000 euros as a rental fee for fibre optics lines.
ROI after 31 months
In a specific example, a customer would like to transmit 9x32 Gigabit Fibre Channel, 3x 100 Gigabit Ethernet and 12x10 Gigabit Ethernet between two data centers in Frankfurt, i.e. a total of 24 services. For redundancy reasons, the signals are transmitted node- and edge-disjointly via two different fibre optic lines and the customer would therefore have to lease 48 fibre optic lines.
Without DWDM technology, customers must rent one fiber optic line for each service with total fee of EUR 2.16 million over a five-year term, with a calculated rent of EUR 750/fiber optic line per month. A DWDM system enables customers to transmit 24 services via one single fiber optic line (redundant 2 fiber optic lines).
A redundantly designed DWDM system, in which all services are encrypted at layer 1, costs around EUR 670,000 for the redundant transmission of the 24 services mentioned, including installation and service over five years. Customers save 2.07 million euros over five years (46 fibre optic lines). The ROI with WDM is thus achieved after 31 months.
ROI in detail
EUR 2.16 million (rental costs for 48 lines over 60 months) minus EUR 670,000 (DWDM system incl. installation and service for 5 years) equals EUR 1.49 million minus EUR 90,000 (rental costs for the 2 fiber optic lines required) equals EUR 1.4 million rent divided by EUR 750 (monthly rental costs for one line) spread over 60 months equals 31 months.