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Ciena Expands Focus on Government Customers with New Subsidiary

Rob Rice Named Vice President and Managing Director of Ciena Government Solutions, Inc. (CGSI)

Ciena® Corporation (Nasdaq: CIEN), the network specialist, today announced Ciena Government Solutions, Inc. (CGSI), a subsidiary with dedicated resources and networking expertise to address the evolving communications requirements of the government marketplace. Ciena also announced that Rob Rice joined the Company as Vice President and Managing Director of the new CGSI subsidiary. Most recently, Rice served as 3COM’s Vice President of Federal Sales.

Furthering Ciena’s specialist position and focus on key customer segments, CGSI consolidates a portion of Ciena’s substantial engineering, support and professional service resources in a separate entity dedicated to designing, deploying and supporting advanced, flexible network solutions for the unique needs of government customers. The work of CGSI also will be supported by Ciena’s newly-formed Government Advisory Board (see related announcement: “Ciena Announces Government Advisory Board”).

Rice is responsible for building Ciena’s government business by expanding the Company’s existing relationships with Department of Defense (DoD) agencies and others within the federal, state and local marketplaces. He will also work to ensure government customers appreciate the value of Ciena’s FlexSelect™ Architecture, including the Adaptive WAN solution set, a flexible communications framework that provides high-performance network connectivity for emerging applications such as networked storage replication, Web services, and distributed computing. Ciena’s Adaptive WAN capabilities enable applications such as continuity of operations and disaster recovery, and facilitate the transition to network-centric operations for government agencies in a flexible, secure and cost-effective manner.

Rice brings more than 25 years of experience in the technology industry and federal marketplace, including a variety of sales management positions, worldwide responsibilities and experience with industry leaders like Cisco Systems, where he helped create the Cisco Federal Operations program as well as IBM Corporation, Lucent Technologies, Juniper Networks and Symbol Technologies. Rice holds a bachelor’s degree from George Mason University.

The government is a key customer segment for Ciena, demonstrated by the current network deployment with the DoD for its GIG-BE project as well as several deployments within the Department of Energy (DoE) and other government agencies and organizations worldwide. With respect to GIG-BE, Ciena is successfully meeting an aggressive deployment schedule for the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), enabling the agency to continue meeting its goals for testing and implementation under tight delivery and deployment timelines.

“Ciena’s organizational moves, including the appointment of Rob Rice to lead our government group, illustrate our commitment to delivering assured, specialized network solutions that meet the scalability and reliability requirements of federal government agencies,” said Jim Collier, Ciena’s senior vice president of worldwide sales. “Leveraging the success of our sustained support of the Department of Defense with its global network backbone, Ciena continues to prove our experience in supply chain management, manufacturing, services and support to design and deploy networks to meet the scale and scope of any government project.”

Ciena Application-Driven Government Networking Solutions
Ciena’s product portfolio and services directly support the deployment of networks required for a variety of government applications, including:

• High-Performance Metro, Regional and Global Networks for Mission-Critical Operations - Meeting the need to establish assured, high-performance global networks within ever-shortening timeframes, Ciena’s portfolio of flexible optical, data and storage networking solutions significantly expand the capacity and reliability of existing networks. Ciena network solutions deliver scalable, on-demand bandwidth, with capacity that can quickly be added for strategic applications that require real-time transfer of large amounts of data for scientists doing research or defense, personnel exchanging surveillance, reconnaissance or other military command and control information. 

• Consolidated, Multiservice Networks to Transform Government Communications - Government agencies are looking to interconnect their disparate, legacy networks at various geographic locations into unified, next-generation networks with the performance, quality of service and reliability to support current and emerging IT applications. Ciena’s optical and data networking solutions significantly expand the network’s available bandwidth to create efficient, flexible and scalable solutions.

• Continuity of Operations - Facilitating government agencies’ ability to meet continuity of operations requirements in the face of natural disasters, terrorism or other potential disruptions, Ciena’s storage extension platforms deliver field-proven, secure network solutions supporting bandwidth requirements for remote replication and back-up storage, enabling government agencies to cost-effectively extend their storage area networks anywhere –from across town to across the country– to ensure the reliable and accurate back-up of all data and applications.

“Government agencies find themselves at the intersection of conflicting requirements, increasing the capacity and multiservice capabilities of their networks while reducing network costs and complexity,” said Rob Rice, vice president of Ciena Government Solutions, Inc. “The proximity of Ciena’s corporate headquarters to the Capital Beltway enables us to closely collaborate with our partners and federal government organizations to design network solutions that meet their requirements for assured, scalable and high-performance networks.”

For additional information on Ciena’s government solutions, please visit http://www.ciena.com/government.