National LambdaRail Announces Expanded Partnership with Cisco Systems

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

National LambdaRail (NLR), the 12,000 mile high performance optical fiber network linking research and educational institutions throughout the United States, announced today an expansion of its partnership agreement with Cisco, the world's leading networking and communications technology and service provider. Under the terms of the partnership Cisco will work with NLR to further expand and enhance its networking infrastructure with 40G and then up to 100 G capability, to meet future demands for the transportation, storage and computational requirements of massive amounts of data generated by large scientific research projects and by NLR's new focus on health data and healthcare applications. The enhancement includes new capabilities and services delivered by the NLR TelePresence Exchange.

It was announced in July that Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong and the Chan Soon-Shiong Institute for Advanced Health had assumed financial responsibility for NLR, with a funding commitment of over $100 million. The CSS Institute said at that time that it would connect NLR with genomic sequencing centers around the country, dedicated healthcare data centers, a high performance supercomputer designed specifically for genomic analysis, and with both health researchers and healthcare providers.

This enhanced infrastructure is now being put in place, transforming NLR from only a communications network into a translational healthcare ecosystem, to realize the promise of genomic medicine and bring the power of supercomputing to the point of care. It will also serve as a platform for innovative services and transformation in education, science and other areas.

“We are very delighted to have Cisco as our corporate partner as we build together the new infrastructure for 21^st century, personalized medicine, “ said Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, Chairman of NLR and the CSS Institute, “and not just because of the technologies the company can provide. Just as important is the deep understanding and experience that the Cisco team has of the needs of the scientific research and healthcare communities.”

“We are pleased and excited to see our long standing NLR relationship being expanded to be an important component of Dr. Soon-Shiong's transformational vision. The next generation NLR networking and TelePresence capabilities will be a critical element of enabling this vision,” commented Pankaj Patel, SVP Cisco.

“The new routing and switching technology provided through the Cisco ASR 9000 platform positions NLR to develop the most scalable, highly available and high performance services required to handle the wide range of applications and content in the rapidly expanding NLR customer base,” said Sri Hosakote, VP, Core Routing Cisco.

About NLR

National LambdaRail is a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization founded by the research and education community. It connects over 280 universities and federal laboratories, which use NLR's 12,000 miles of high performance optical fiber in the United States and its connections to overseas networks for leading edge research. Users include NASA, NOAA and NIH. NLR creates opportunities for collaboration, innovation and commercialization among the global research community as well as public and private partners. It also provides customized support for individual researchers and projects. For more information please visit www.nlr.net