Privately owned Calient Technologies has been acquired by Suzhou Chunxing Precision Mechanical Co., Ltd., who will buy a controlling stake in the company and provide manufacturing services to help it expand.

Founded in 2001, Chunxing is a publicly traded Chinese manufacturer of precision metal alloy and plastic structures for the automotive, consumer electronics, industrial, and telecom market segments.

The optical circuit switch developer will continue to operate from its Goleta, California, headquarters under the Calient brand.  

The trend towards virtualisation could lead to an expanded role for optical switches inside data centres, according to Calient Technologies.

The optical circuit switch developer is proposing a new data centre architecture that would allow data centre operators use server and storage resources more efficiently – if they are prepared to buy some optical switches.