Francois Locoh-Donou, senior vice president, to deliver plenary address at ‘SDN for Cloud’ session

Ciena^® Corporation (NYSE: CIEN), the network specialist, will showcase the Software Defined Networking (SDN) elements of its OPⁿ network architecture in booth #506 at the Open Networking Summit (ONS) in Santa Clara, March 3-5. Additionally, through a series of demonstrations, Ciena’s technology will show how SDN-enabled networks can enable service providers to rapidly create and deploy differentiated services with greater agility and lower costs.  Ciena representatives will also be on hand to discuss the recently announced strategic global agreement with Ericsson whereby the two companies will leverage their combined resources and expertise to jointly develop and co-market service provider SDN technology.

Plenary Address:

• Tuesday, March 4 at 9:45 a.m. PT: Francois Locoh-Donou, senior vice president of the global products group, will deliver a plenary address during the SDN for Cloud session. During his presentation he will show that SDN is key to closing the “agility gap” that stands in the way of service providers’ transformations to information-driven business models, and offer a view of Ciena solutions that will support and enable such transformations. This session will be webcast live and be made available via the ONS website www.opennetsummit.org.

Speaking Sessions:

• Sunday, March 2 at 9:30 a.m. PT: Marc Cohn, senior director of market development      at Ciena and Chairman      of the Market Education committee for the Open Networking Foundation      (ONF), will lead the      tutorial for the SDN Market Opportunities – Insights from Early      Innovators session and present “Open      SDN- Three Years Later.”
• Sunday, March 2 at 1:45 p.m. PT: Chris Janz, vice president of market development,      will co-present with CenturyLink on “Real-World Insights from the Carriers.” This session will provide an overview of      carrier-grade SDN and will assess the key trends, use cases and challenges      motivating carriers and operators - large and small - to overhaul their      network architecture with SDN.

Demonstration:

Multi-Layer Carrier SDN Applications (Ciena Booth #506): Ciena will also utilize its OPⁿtestbed to demonstrate applications in development for multi-layer path computation, provisioning, dynamic pricing, and network utilization and cost optimizations. Attendees of Ciena’s demonstration will see a live SDN-controlled packet/OTN/DWDM switched network where traffic flows are intelligently programmed using the OpenFlow protocol across traditional layer boundaries, improving overall efficiency. In addition, attendees will see how:

• SDN enables increased revenues through analytics-based dynamic pricing for on-demand services;
• Path selection and provisioning can be improved with multi-layer SDN, by simultaneously factoring in constraints (e.g. bandwidth, latency) and available resources at all layers; and
• Self-tuning algorithms beyond Shortest Path First may improve network utilization and profitability.

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 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-K, which Ciena filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on December 20, 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.