Company moves away from traditional channel partner programs by embracing customization, personalization, and strategic business planning to empower partners globally

To accelerate customers’ transition to more adaptive networks, Ciena (NYSE: CIEN) has enhanced its award-winning channel partner program to better align with the rapidly changing IT landscape. With the new Ciena Partner Network (CPN), Ciena is moving away from traditional, “one-size fits all” partner programs to a new collaborative and personalized approach, which is designed to enable and reward all partner business models from a single platform. The CPN program enables Ciena partners to uniquely respond to technology disruptions and market transitions, capture new opportunities, and offer specialized services and solutions.

Key Facts:

• Companies are automating and/or virtualizing their IT environments to remain competitive, and channel partners’ business plans and training programs must continually adapt to intercept this opportunity. To facilitate this requirement, Ciena’s CPN, the newly unified partner ecosystem and program, will provide greater flexibility and customization to all partners inclusive of managed service providers, resellers, integrators, distributors, or service partners.

• Built for emerging and future channel market conditions, the CPN program gives partners in-depth, customizable training, enablement resources and collaborative joint business planning – all specifically tailored to the partners’ business requirements. It enables partners to reduce time to market, drive incremental sales, expand technical expertise, and deliver measurable outcomes.

• In addition, Partner Academy, Ciena’s pioneering training and certification program, guides partners on personalized learner journeys to expand their expertise by offering the same in-depth, comprehensive sales and technical training as Ciena staff.

• Solution Enablement Toolkits (SETs) provide a collection of sales, marketing and services development resources that enable partners to build specialized Data Center Interconnect (DCI) and Ethernet offerings based on Ciena solutions. Resources include: training, market insights, competitive intelligence, geo-targeting, sales playbooks and exclusive access to industry analysts.

Ciena will onboard more than 200 highly specialized, industry-leading partners into the Ciena Partner Network including Anycomm, CenturyLink, Comcast, Kapsch, LightRiver, Windstream and Zayo.

Executive Comments:

• “Our new partner program complements our Adaptive Network approach to help Ciena clients and partners adapt to changing market conditions.  By moving away from the traditional program structure to a more collaborative, personalized and empowering approach, our CPN program delivers unprecedented flexibility and customization that harnesses the unique value of each partner.”- Sandra Glaser Cheek, Vice President, Global Partners and Alliances at Ciena

• “The networking solutions market is increasingly competitive today, and salespeople need to lead with insight that shows how a given solution will benefit their customers’ business. With its new best practice partner program, Ciena is providing its partners with the ability to do just that. It offers partners a combination of online and offline research, sales tools, and training that specifically address partners’ key selling challenges.”
  - Bruce Page, Vice President, GlobalData

Partner Comments:

• “After previewing the Ciena Partner Network program, I was very pleased to see that Ciena is taking a more flexible and customized approach to support how my business is changing and how it will continue to evolve in the coming years. We welcome this shift away from traditional partner programs and look forward to seeing immediate and mutually profitable results in partnership with Ciena.”
  - Jung Il Kim, Senior Vice President of Sales, Anycomm

• “We understand the power of data and its ability to help us look at our technology solutions so we can deliver the right mix of automation, intelligence and scale within the network to help our customers achieve their business goals. Through the changes made to the Ciena partner program, we now have greater flexibility to use data and insights to implement adaptive networking solutions for our customers.”
  - Garrett Gee, Vice President, Indirect, Strategic Partnerships and Alliances, CenturyLink

• “Over the past several years, our partnering relationship with Ciena has helped drive demand and create new content for Comcast Business. We look forward to a continued strategic relationship and exploring the new aspects of the Ciena Partner Network Program.”
  - Anita Dorf, Vice President, Enterprise Marketing, Comcast Business

• “Colt’s partnership with Ciena has been instrumental to our success. Ciena’s people are extremely dedicated and they have now provided a personalized global program and joint value proposition backed by a strategic business approach to drive activities that help generate sales pipeline and bookings across all Colt segments. Starting with in-depth training on a global scale all the way through sales and event execution, the Ciena Partner Network program will continue to help accelerate our growth. These program elements are key to our strategic alliance and Ciena is setting an example of how a partner ecosystem should work.”
  - Bo Duim, Global Director Business Development & Partner Ecosystem, Colt Technology Services

• “Kapsch is thrilled to be a member of the Ciena Partner Network. We believe in Ciena’s Adaptive Network vision, as our customers increasingly require networks that grow smarter, more agile, and more responsive. As we continue to build out complex Ciena-based network solutions and services and extend into more markets, the forward-thinking CPN program strengthens our ability and uniquely allows us to accelerate our value to clients.”
  - Ralf Arweiler, Managing Director Kapsch BusinessCom GmbH

• “Not only is CPN a winner for Ciena, it is for us and our customers, as well. Ciena realized that to deliver upon the promise of Adaptive Networks, they needed an innovative program that was built specifically for the task, and one that was geared to the future. Cookie cutter programs built around a VAR model work in some environments, but to deliver full value to our markets it takes more than that. Combining cutting edge technology with a multifaceted partner like us with sector expertise in designing, deploying and integrating programmable infrastructure, and in software control, automation and integration, is what’s needed. By collaboratively planning segment support, we will better leverage each of our strengths to the market’s benefit.”
  - Mike Jonas, President of Global Customer Operations for LightRiver

• “Ciena has always been a collaborative partner and industry leader. The CPN program takes this up a level because it recognizes our own company’s unique business model. Partnering with Ciena allows us to deliver an industry leading innovative and trusted solution portfolio to our customers, while the additional enablement tools will allow us to address joint business planning – identifying new markets and solution/service sets and marketing new high impact and differentiated services.”
  - John Nishimoto, Vice President of Products and Marketing, Windstream

About CienaCiena (NYSE: CIEN) is a networking systems, services, and software company. We provide solutions that help our clients create more adaptive networks in response to the constantly changing demands of their users. By delivering best-in-class networking technology through high-touch consultative relationships, we build the world’s most sophisticated networks with automation and scale. For updates on Ciena, follow us on Twitter @Ciena, LinkedIn, the Ciena Insights blog, or visit www.ciena.com.

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