CIENA INTEGRATES MANAGEMENT OF MULTISERVICE SOLUTIONS

CIENA Unifies Management Of Optical And Data Layers Into ON-Center Management Suite As Part Of LightWorks Services Initiative

Linthicum, MD — 06/19/2003 Ciena® Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEN), a leading provider of global network solutions, today announced the availability of integrated optical and data network management with its LightWorks ON-Center® Management Suite, extending Ciena’s point-and-click service provisioning and other management functions into the data layer.

Ciena has successfully integrated management of the Distributed Node (DN) next-generation multiservice switching platform from WaveSmith Networks, acquired on June 16, and multiservice core switches from Équipe Communications™ into ON-Center, Ciena’s software suite for comprehensive element-, network- and service-level management. The integrated solution is commercially available now.

Équipe is a member of Ciena’s LightWorks™ Technology Alliance, expanding on Ciena’s architectural vision for integrated, intelligent networks by driving design, development, testing and interoperability. Ciena’s partnerships generate comprehensive, economical network solutions in support of emerging applications and data services.

“As the industry moves toward a converged data-telephony model, combining network operations for the integrated management of multiple layers and services, in addition to ongoing hardware consolidation, is a major step forward,” said Chris Nicoll, vice president of telecom infrastructure at Current Analysis. “We believe Ciena’s vision for an automated, integrated all-service network is a practical approach for carriers to offer an expanded suite of more profitable services on the existing infrastructure.”

Integrating management of the new multiservice Ciena and Équipe solutions into Ciena’s ON-Center enables dynamic, end-to-end service provisioning, diagnostics and management across optical and data layers using a single Operations Support System (OSS). With these extended capabilities, ON-Center unites network layers for a seamless, flexible and converged management solution that increases the cost-efficiency of delivering new and traditional services on a single, intelligent network.

“Our unified ON-Center management solution enables service providers to offer key data services more efficiently over the existing network infrastructure while also providing a seamless migration path to next-generation technologies such as MPLS,” said Francois Locoh-Donou, vice president of marketing at Ciena. “These services are expected to see continued growth in the years ahead, and with our LightWorks Services approach, we believe that carriers will be able to increase their gross margins for these and other services in some cases by more than 10 points. Unified management is a critical part of this profitable solution.”

Ciena’s multiservice switching platform allows service providers to evolve their networks at a pace that matches their business plans and budgets. Designed to protect and leverage service providers’ investments in existing Layer 2 (data) networks, enable increasing revenues and margins, and create a clear migration path to emerging technologies and applications, the Ciena platform offers customers industry-leading reliability, scalability, and economy.

Équipe offers the only multiservice core platform purpose-built for the migration of ATM and IP services to a common MPLS / intelligent optical network. Équipe's E3200 MPLS Convergence Switch combines the native ATM switching, MPLS Label Switch Router (LSR) functionality, and ATM/MPLS interworking required for large-scale carriers to realize the operational and capital cost savings of a converged MPLS core. The E3200 provides the connection scale, granular traffic management, and service flexibility necessary to enable this migration without jeopardizing service levels and traffic guarantees for high margin services.