Industry veteran to help drive the shift to on-demand networks and transform capacity into capability in the region

Ciena^® (NYSE: CIEN) has appointed Matt Vesperman as Managing Director for Australia and New Zealand. Vesperman was appointed to guide Ciena’s customers and partners in the region as they adapt to accommodate high-bandwidth applications and services, such as those needed for data centre interconnect (DCI), cloud-based services and the Internet of Things.

Growth in cloud computing, network virtualisation and openness have created a new web-scale dynamic that is changing today's network architectures. Vesperman will drive Ciena’s OPⁿ network approach in the region to facilitate the transformation towards open, software-driven networks to meet this growth.

“Matt is a proven industry veteran with an engineering background and business sense that makes him the perfect fit to continue to drive our business in Australia and New Zealand,” said Anthony McLachlan, Vice President and General Manager, Asia Pacific at Ciena. “He has been at the forefront of innovation in this space for more than two decades, and his knowledge of the ongoing evolution of networks – from pipes that connected two locations into cloud-based, software defined architectures – makes him ideally suited to help service providers in the region transform capacity into capability.”

Vesperman has more than 25 years of experience across a variety of disciplines within the IT&T industry, including working for more than 10 years with Nortel and previously with Ciena in 2010. Before re-joining Ciena, Vesperman held numerous roles in the region including most recently as a senior account director at Ericsson and as VP of sales at Openwave Mobility. He has also previously worked in engineering roles at Telstra, Alcatel-Lucent and Fujitsu.

“The Internet of Things era is here, and service providers across the country are looking at ways to cater for this explosion in data that only promises to increase with the further proliferation of IoT devices,” said Vesperman. “Our customers and prospective customers in Australia and New Zealand want to know how their networks can be architected into fully programmable infrastructures to meet the seamless experience demands of their customers.”

Vesperman holds a Bachelor of Engineering, Telecoms degree from the University of Technology in Sydney.

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 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. 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.

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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-K, which Ciena filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 9, 2016. 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.