Networks are feeling the full force of AI-driven
demand. Hyperscale data centers, cloud providers,
and service operators are pushing fiber deployments
harder than ever to feed low-latency generative
models, agentic systems, and edge workloads that
consume bandwidth at unprecedented scale. At the
same time, the underlying infrastructure remains
stubbornly complex—multi-vendor equipment
spanning decades of technology generations,
siloed management systems, tens of thousands
of devices, and petabits of capacity that are often
poorly understood or underutilized. Operators face
constant pressure to contain costs, maintain fivenines
or six-nines reliability, navigate supply chain
constraints, and move toward autonomous network
operations without massive rip-and-replace projects.
The gap between raw network data and actionable
intelligence has become one of the most expensive
problems in the industry, demanding advanced
optical network observability and AI-driven network
automation.
Simplifying Network Complexity
Pipeline recently had an opportunity to sit down
with stakeholders at LightRiver including Senior
Vice President of Sales and Marketing Operations
Walt Paskowski, Senior Vice President of Software
Solutions, Jim Brinksma, and Vice President of
Software Product Management, Marcelo McAndrew,
to explore how the company’s Prism® platform
helps address the gap by translating network
complexity into clean, operational intelligence to
prepare organizations for the shift to autonomous
networking.