Regional leader to strengthen partner network and increase influence across enterprise in EMEA

With a continued focus on increasing presence and engagement amongst partners and key industry verticals in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Ciena^® (NYSE: CIEN) has announced the appointment of Franck Welter as its new Head of Partners, Enterprise and Public Sector, EMEA. Franck is responsible for strengthening Ciena’s network of solution provider and managed service provider (MSP) partners in the region to expand the company’s reach in the enterprise and public sector markets.

With more than 20 years of sales leadership and business development experience in the telecommunications industry, Franck brings a wealth of knowledge and invaluable expertise to Ciena. As operators continue to transform their networks to meet the demands of high-bandwidth services, Franck will help educate partners about Ciena’s OPⁿ network approach that is essential to emerging software defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualisation (NFV) technologies.

Executive quotes:

• “Ciena is continuing to work with and      through our channel partners to help reinforce and open up mutually      beneficial opportunities. Franck’s impressive background in data centre, cloud,      networking, security and software applications lends itself to support      these opportunities, especially as we move toward more agile, on-demand      network infrastructures.”
  -          Benoit de la Tour, vice president and general manager, EMEA, at Ciena

• “Ciena’s channel partner strategy in EMEA plays an important role in the company’s global business      development. I look forward to strengthening existing partner      relationships and also establishing new engagements that will help Ciena      continue to serve the most advanced enterprise and telecommunications      networks across the region.”
  -          Franck Welter, head of partners, enterprise and public sector, EMEA at Ciena

Most recently, Franck served as director, partner sales, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Russia (EMEAR) at Cisco, where he led a sizable, diverse team and oversaw a successful business transformation, which led to growth in the region.

About CienaCiena (NYSE: CIEN) is the network specialist. We collaborate with customers worldwide to unlock the strategic potential of their networks and fundamentally change the way they perform and compete. Ciena leverages its deep expertise in packet and optical networking and distributed software automation to deliver solutions in alignment with its OPⁿ architecture for next-generation networks. We enable a high-scale, programmable infrastructure that can be controlled and adapted by network-level applications, and provide open interfaces to coordinate computing, storage and network resources in a unified, virtualized environment. For updates on Ciena news, follow us on Twitter @Ciena or on LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/company/ciena. Investors are encouraged to review the Investors section of our website at www.ciena.com/investors, where we routinely post press releases, SEC filings, recent news, financial results, and other announcements. From time to time we exclusively post material information to this website along with other disclosure channels that we use.

Note to Ciena InvestorsForward-looking statements. This press release contains certain forward-looking statements based on current expectations, forecasts and assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements are based on information available to the Company as of the date hereof; and Ciena's actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied, due to risks and uncertainties associated with its business, which include the risk factors disclosed in its Report on Form 10-K, which Ciena filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on December 19, 2014. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding Ciena's expectations, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future and can be identified by forward-looking words such as "anticipate," "believe," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "should," "will," and "would" or similar words. Ciena assumes no obligation to update the information included in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.