Ciena® Corporation (NASDAQ:CIEN), the network specialist, today announced that its CN 4200™ FlexSelect™ Advanced Services Platform was honored by R&D Magazine as one of the 100 most technologically significant products introduced to the marketplace in the past year. Submitted jointly with IBM Corporation, Ciena’s CN 4200 was evaluated and recognized for its support of IBM’s Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex™ (GDPS®) business continuity solution, a widely-deployed IBM family of solutions used primarily for IBM mainframe servers to provide customers with disaster recovery and continuous application availability capabilities.

For 45 years, the R&D 100 Awards have provided a mark of excellence known to industry, government and academia as proof that a product is one of the most innovative ideas of the year. In this year’s competition, the Magazine received entries from many of the most prestigious companies, research organizations and universities in the world. Winning products were recognized by a panel of technical experts on the basis of importance, uniqueness and usefulness.

“Many of the Fortune 500 companies around the world, including most of the financial sector, rely on IBM's GDPS offering to help maintain continuous availability and resiliency for their operations,” said Dr. Casimer DeCusatis, a Distinguished Engineer with IBM's Systems and Technology Group. “Deploying WDM connectivity between redundant data centers provides these enterprises with perhaps the highest available business continuity solutions using a very cost-effective network."

Ciena’s CN 4200 is currently the only GDPS-qualified WDM solution with advanced time-division multiplexing (TDM) capabilities for multiple Inter-System Channel (ISC) links exchanging Server Time Protocol (STP) time synchronization messages. Ciena's unique approach performs with near zero impact on latency in the transport of STP signals, and offers a dramatic reduction in wavelength channel counts, resulting in a lower cost of network connectivity.

“We are extremely proud to receive this distinguished recognition, which is a testament to the dedication and hard work of Ciena’s and IBM’s product development and interoperability testing and qualification teams,” said Tom Mock, senior vice president of strategic planning at Ciena. “The continued success of the CN 4200 platform with our partners and customers proves the product’s unique ability to deliver any mix of services with circuit-like performance across an efficient packet-based infrastructure.”

More details about the 2007 R&D 100 Awards program winners will be published in the September 2007 issue of R&D Magazine. Honorees will be recognized at a formal awards banquet in October at the Grand Ballroom of Chicago’s Navy Pier.

About Ciena’s CN 4200

CN 4200, the metro/regional cornerstone of Ciena’s FlexSelect™ Architecture, is the only WDM transport and aggregation solution that offers on-demand programmability of any port to support any service today—including SONET/SDH, OTN, Ethernet, storage and video—with the ability to download support for tomorrow's services. Since its introduction in May 2005, the platform has experienced widespread market penetration and is deployed with more than 100 service providers, MSOs, enterprises and government organizations worldwide. By enabling a flexible mix of existing and emerging services, the CN 4200 makes convergence practical, profitable and easy to implement, so customers can continue to capitalize on opportunities ahead.

About Ciena

Ciena specializes in network transition. We provide the flexible platforms, intelligent software and professional services to build converged networks for enhanced services and applications. With a growing global presence, Ciena leverages its heritage of practical innovation to deliver maximum performance and economic value in communications networks worldwide. For more information, visit www.ciena.com.

Note to Ciena Investors

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 1, 2007. 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.