Expertise to address customer transformation strategies and challenges in today’s on-demand world

Ciena® (NYSE: CIEN) has appointed Joe Marsella as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), where he will lead a talented group of engineers and developers in driving Ciena’s expansion in the region. By providing strategic counsel to Ciena customers and partners, Joe will also provide strategic counsel to Ciena customers and partners to help them transform their networks through key technologies such as software defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualisation (NFV) to enable agility, innovation, and differentiation in service offerings while lowering overall network costs.

Key Facts:

  • With more than 20 years of experience in the software and telecommunications industry, Joe has vast expertise in both packet and optical networking, including detailed knowledge on SDN, NFV, photonics, dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM), optical transport networks (OTN), Carrier Ethernet and control planes.
  • Prior to this new role, Joe served in several capacities within Ciena; most recently as the Senior Director Product Line Management, responsible for the software strategy of Ciena’s Agility software portfolio, now part of Ciena Blue Planet. He also held leadership positions in Ciena’s product line management and R&D organizations, providing expertise and direction in key vertical markets and product portfolios.
  • Joe has a Master of Science (MSc) degree in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University, and a joint Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from Purdue University and ESCP/EAP Paris. He is based at Ciena’s EMEA headquarters in London, reporting to Benoit de la Tour, VP and General Manager EMEA.

Executive Comments:

  • “The pace of change in networking is accelerating as EMEA service providers, enterprise customers and partners embrace more agile, on-demand architectures. Joe is an essential addition to our team with software expertise that is especially pertinent to help our customers address the complex business challenges associated with network transformation.”
    - Benoit de la Tour, Vice President and General Manager EMEA
  • “Increasing demand for high-bandwidth services and applications – from cloud computing and virtualisation, to data centre interconnect (DCI) and video – are having an impact on our customers, partners and their end-users. Strategic networking solutions that take advantage of emerging technologies, such as SDN and NFV, ensure that are ready to adapt, bring new services to market and extract the most value from the network.”
    - Joe Marsella, Chief Technology Officer, EMEA at Ciena

About Ciena
Ciena (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 OPnarchitecture 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 Investors
Forward-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 10, 2015. 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.