SYDNEY, Australia – June 23, 2010– Ciena Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEN), the network specialist, today expanded its global reach with the official launch of its presence in Australia and New Zealand. With its acquisition of the optical networking and Carrier Ethernet assets of Nortel*’s Metro Ethernet Networks (MEN) business in March 2010, Ciena is now the number one optical networking provider in North America and number three globally¹, delivering solutions in over 60 countries to more than 1000 customers. In fact, Ciena is estimated to hold 17 percent of both the global long-haul and metro WDM markets¹.

Focus in Australia and New Zealand

Ciena now has offices in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand with teams dedicated to meeting the next-generation network infrastructure needs of service providers, enterprises and research and education institutions in the region. These operations are being led by Anthony Mclachlan as Vice President and General Manager, Asia Pacific, and David McDermott as Regional Managing Director, Australia and New Zealand, who both joined Ciena through its acquisition of the Nortel MEN assets.

Locally, Ciena recently completed successful field trials of its 40G and 100G coherent optical technology with VERNet and Telstra in Australia and Southern Cross in New Zealand. The Company serves a number of additional customers in the region, including AAPT, Optus, Uecomm and the Australian Securities Exchange in Australia and TelstraClear in New Zealand. In the larger Asia Pacific region, Ciena provides solutions to customers in China, India, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore and South Korea. Globally, the Company serves nearly three-quarters of the world’s largest service providers, global enterprises – with a particularly strong track record in mission-critical financial and healthcare networks – as well as research and education institutions and other essential government agencies.

“We’ve hit the ground running in this region, maintaining our customer support levels while focusing on de-costing networks by leveraging our leading innovations in high-capacity transport, Ethernet-based backhaul and network automation. We’re combining the expertise of the historical Nortel MEN organisation and its local relationships with the Ciena team in the region to create a unified group that is focused on targeting the region’s prominent broadband projects and other new business across vertical industries,” said Anthony Mclachlan, vice president and general manager, Asia Pacific at Ciena.

David Yuile, Chief Operating Officer of Australian telco AAPT, said Ciena’s technology is helping his company improve its bottom line and create new opportunities to compete in the Australian communications services market.

“We built our optical network backbone using Ciena’s Common Photonic Layer platform, which gives us massive bandwidth scalability up to 100G without having to fundamentally change any of the equipment in the network core,” said Yuile. “Not only does the technology help us lower the cost of transporting data across our national network, but over time, the scalability of the network means we can keep upgrade costs down while adding more services and creating new revenue-generating opportunities.”

Focus on Technology Innovation

Ciena’s product and services portfolio offers best-of-breed solutions focused on converged optical Ethernet to accelerate the transition to next-generation network infrastructures, leveraging recognised expertise in optical and Carrier Ethernet technologies and industry-leading control plane and management software. Ciena was first to market with coherent 40G/100G optical systems for applications such as metro, long-haul and submarine transport, and has more years of experience than any other company and the most field deployments worldwide for that technology. Ciena is also focused on delivering Carrier Ethernet solutions for mobile backhaul and business Ethernet services, as well as automated OTN switching combined with control plane software for resiliency and faster time-to-market.

“Global service providers invested more than US$21.6 billion² in Carrier Ethernet last year, and Asia Pacific increased its share of the US$2.95 billion optical networking market by five per cent in 2009³ despite the global financial crisis. These gains have been driven by the industry-wide transition to next-generation networks, and Ciena is uniquely positioned to address that trend,” added Mike Aquino, senior vice president, global field operations at Ciena. “We believe that our expanded presence in Asia Pacific, our global scale and our acute focus on technology innovation will enable customers in the region to more quickly drive diverse broadband services to market at a lower cost, while ensuring the best-possible end-user experience – attributes that are essential to delivering on the promise of major network initiatives.” 

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MEDIA ADVISORY

Ciena Appoints Senior Management Team for Australia and New Zealand Operations

SYDNEY, Australia – June 23, 2010 – Ciena Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEN), the network specialist, today announced the appointments of Anthony Mclachlan and David McDermott to the roles of Vice President and General Manager, Asia Pacific, and Regional Managing Director, Australia and New Zealand, respectively.

Mclachlan and McDermott joined Ciena through its acquisition of Nortel*’s Metro Ethernet Networks (MEN) business, where they served as members of the leadership team. In his new role, Mclachlan is responsible for leading Ciena’s field operations teams in Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and Vietnam. McDermott is directly responsible for managing Ciena’s Australian and New Zealand business, which encompasses all existing customer accounts inherited through the MEN acquisition, including Optus, AAPT, Uecomm, VERNet and the Australian Securities Exchange in Australia, and TelstraClear and Southern Cross in New Zealand.

“Asia Pacific, and specifically Australia and New Zealand, is a critical market for us as we look to expand our global footprint and drive the adoption of our market-leading converged optical and Carrier Ethernet solutions,” said Mclachlan.

“There’s been a lot of talk recently, mainly in Australia but also in New Zealand, about connecting end-users to ultra high-speed broadband services, with a particular focus on the ‘last mile’ of fibre-to-the-node or home,” he added. “What hasn’t been discussed as much is the resulting explosion in demand for bandwidth in the core of the network, and our own research indicates that traffic volumes in the core will quickly reach multiple terabytes in a very short space of time.”

Mclachlan continued, “At the same time, the growing demand for mobile data, due in part to the popularity of data-intensive devices such as smartphones and tablets, and the gradual migration to 4G technologies such as WiMAX and LTE, will put even more pressure on mobile carriers to upgrade their network backhaul with more efficient and resilient transport technology.”

McDermott said there is a window of opportunity for local service providers – especially network operators that are embarking on significant broadband projects and other communications infrastructure initiatives – to optimise their networks with technology that makes high-speed data transport more efficient, resilient and economical.

“These are key strengths of Ciena’s portfolio, which is designed to address the most critical areas of next-generation network architectures – high-capacity transport, mesh-based switching and Ethernet services,” he said. “Ciena’s market-leading optical transport and switching solutions and Carrier Ethernet platforms, combined with our expertise and experience in software and services, help customers manage costs that would otherwise spiral out of control, and provide a compelling alternative to the competition. We are the only vendor, for example, with a commercial deployment of 100G transport, and have conducted numerous successful field trials of 40G and 100G technology in Australia and New Zealand during the past several years.”

In his 16 years at Nortel, Mclachlan held senior management positions across Asia and the United Kingdom. As Nortel’s Vice President of Carrier Sales in Asia, he was responsible for the growth and direction of the carrier business across Nortel’s portfolio of carrier solutions, including Carrier Voice and Applications, WiMax, GSM, CDMA, LTE and MEN. Mclachlan also has a proven track record and extensive experience in multiple regions and disciplines, ranging from commercial management, product management and international sales. He holds Bachelor of Business in accounting/finance and Master of Business Administration degrees from the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia.

In his 13 years with Nortel Australia and New Zealand, McDermott held a variety of business development, sales and management positions. His previous career experience includes seven years at Australia’s largest service provider, Telstra, where he led the company’s development of operational support systems and processes for advanced networks. He was also responsible for systems/product management for voice and data products at Telstra. McDermott holds a Science degree from the University of Melbourne, and post-graduate qualifications in Information Technology from Monash University.

Mclachlan and McDermott are based in Sydney and Melbourne respectively.