Industry expert to address region’s growing demand for greater connectivity and high-bandwidth services

Ciena^® Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEN), the network specialist, today announced the appointment of Hector Silva to the position of Chief Technology Officer / Strategic Sales Leader for the Caribbean and Latin American (CALA) region. The appointment follows Ciena’s continued growth in key CALA markets and further underscores the company’s commitment to the region.

With more than 15 years of experience in the telecommunications and technology space, Mr. Silva will lead Ciena’s network architecture teams in CALA and work alongside local sales teams to guide the company’s customers on existing trends like cloud computing and mobile video as well as emerging technologies like software defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV). He will also provide strategic counsel to help operators prepare for and implement new network architectures based on Ciena’s OPⁿ network approach that leverages the company’s expertise in optical, packet and software to enable greater network intelligence, automation and application awareness.

Fabio Medina, general manager and vice president of sales for CALA, commented on the appointment: “Communication networks in the Caribbean and Latin American region are on the verge of fundamental change, driven by exploding demand for high-bandwidth services and greater connectivity. Ciena is reinforcing its focus to help our customers navigate this shift and better compete in the marketplace. Hector has strong technical skills across the Ciena portfolio, and can help us achieve our vision for modernizing networks, driving Ciena’s expansion in the region and leading our talented group of network architects.”

For his part, Mr. Silva said, “Ciena is an established leader in providing technologies that help position CALA service providers to address the growing demands of mobile broadband, video and cloud computing while laying the foundation to support emerging technologies like SDN.  I am excited to help design strategies and network blueprints that unleash the true potential of these game changing technologies and enable our customers to create new and differentiated service offerings to capture market share.”

“Ciena's focus historically has been, and continues to be, building highly scalable, intelligent, and robust networks that leverage Converged Optical Ethernet, Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM), Optical Transport Network (OTN), Control Plane, Carrier Ethernet and Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) networking technologies,” added Mr. Silva. “Our portfolio of packet optical networking technologies and software allows our customers to deploy the most cost-effective yet flexible networks, not only as intelligent infrastructure, but also as turn-key service engines. Ultimately, this helps our customers to modernize their networks and compete more effectively with richer service offerings while improving CAPEX and OPEX efficiencies.”

Mr. Silva will be based in the company’s CALA offices in South Florida. Prior to this role, he held several leadership positions in systems engineering and strategic sales at Ciena. Mr. Silva has played a key part in the company’s ability to penetrate new markets such as Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, to introduce new technologies, and to build strong relationships based on technical expertise, trust and consultancy.

Ciena currently serves more than 100 customers and operates in more than 20 countries and territories across the CALA region. Ciena serves a number of leading operators in the region, including Cable & Wireless Panamá, LANautilus, MetroRed, Telecom Argentina, Telefónica, Telesur, Telmex and VTR Chile.

About CienaCiena 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 OPⁿ, its approach for building open 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-Q, which Ciena filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on June 12, 2013. 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.