Company Profile
Ciena
Company Overview
About Ciena
Ciena Corporation is a global manufacturer of communications network equipment and solutions, with expertise in Packet-Optical Transport, Packet-Optical Switching, Carrier Ethernet, and Network Support Services.
Many of the world’s largest carriers and service providers have deployed Ciena solutions in their network; including AT&T, BT, Cable & Wireless, CenturyLink, Comcast, France Telecom, Korea Telecom, Sprint, Reliance, Southern Cross, Tata Communications, Telecom Argentina, Telmex, Virgin Media and Verizon.
Ciena also counts numerous national research and education networks as customers, as well as enterprises in the healthcare, finance, transportation and retail industries for real-time, latency sensitive applications such as disaster recovery/business continuity, SAN/LAN extension, data center consolidation and grid computing.
We specialize in helping customers transition to service driven networks that fundamentally change the way they compete. With expertise in optical and Ethernet networking, Ciena combines software-programmable hardware, a common operating system, and unified service and transport management to enable our customers to adapt and scale with any emergent business model.
For more visit www.ciena.com or subscribe to our blog and other communications channels at www.ciena.com/subscribe
Company History
Beginnings
Incorporated in Delaware in November 1992, Ciena’s founding mission was to radically change the economics of telecommunications networks. Initially, the company significantly advanced innovation by pioneering Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology as a means to split light across fiber optic lines, thereby enabling the transport of greater volumes of information such as voice, video and data across communications networks. This technology breakthrough propelled Ciena to rapid success, leading service providers like Sprint and Worldcom to deploy Ciena’s solutions throughout their nationwide networks in the 1990’s. It also led to Ciena’s initial public offering in February 1997, during which the company achieved a market capitalization of $3.4 billion—the largest first-day market capitalization of any venture-funded startup company to that date.
Leveraging its achievements in DWDM, Ciena continued to revolutionize the fields of optical transport, intelligent optical switching and software tools for automating large-scale communications networks. For example, in 1998, Ciena’s 96-channel DWDM system, also referred to as a long-haul optical transport platform, enabled a service provider to transmit almost 3.1 million phone calls across a single fiber pair—enough capacity at the time to carry the voice traffic of all major long-distance carriers combined. By the end of 1999, Ciena was on an impressive growth trajectory, selling its next-generation network equipment to some of the largest carriers worldwide. In fiscal 2001, Ciena achieved annual revenues of $1.6 billion and its market capitalization reached nearly $30 billion, based largely on the success of a single product line.
A Market Shift
In early 2001, the telecommunications industry began to experience a severe downturn, which affected nearly all of its participants, including equipment suppliers like Ciena. Aggressive network builds by communications service providers in anticipation of rapid traffic growth resulted in excessive bandwidth and network overcapacity. At the same time, operators’ business models were threatened by new competitors, emerging technologies and intense price competition. In response, service providers curtailed network build-outs and dramatically reduced their overall capital spending. In fact, industry analysts estimate that service provider spending on optical networking equipment fell from nearly $27 billion in 2001 to $9.4 billion in 2002—an unprecedented, market-wide decline that specifically affected the demand for the products Ciena sold. Not surprisingly, as the industry suffered this radical and widespread contraction, Ciena’s revenues plunged—declining 80 percent to $361 million in 2002.
Business Evolution
In light of the situation, Ciena viewed itself as having two options. With a strong balance sheet, the company could have buckled down and focused solely on cutting costs amidst the market uncertainty. Or, it could move beyond its single, point-product success as a vendor of optical networking equipment to become a strategic provider of advanced networking solutions. Unlike many of its competitors, Ciena took a contrarian approach and chose the latter direction.
Though not without its risks and challenges, for the next several years Ciena executed on a strategy of balancing continued investment in its business with careful financial management and cost control, based on the belief that it would be in a better position to capitalize on future growth opportunities. Critical to this strategy was an expansion of Ciena’s product portfolio and
Notable Products / Brands
Ciena OPn, Cloud Networking, WaveLogic 3, Coherent optical, 40/100G, OneConnect
Notable Accomplishments / Recognition
Website: http://www.ciena.com