CIENA Releases ON-Designer Software Suite for Automated Design, Validation and Turn-up of End-to-End Networks.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

LINTHICUM, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 17, 2003

New Integrated Planning and Design Suite Enables Faster

Time-to-Revenue for New Services, More Efficient Operations Across

the Network

CIENA(R) Corporation (NASDAQ:CIEN), a leading provider of global network solutions, today announced the availability of LightWorks ON-Designer(TM), a comprehensive suite of advanced Java-based design tools that automate planning, design, simulation, validation and turn-up of end-to-end networks. This will result in improved time-to-revenue for new services and enhanced operational cost savings for service providers.

With an open architecture for interacting with existing operations support systems (OSSs) and other modeling instruments, ON-Designer is a powerful tool for the entire network design cycle. It contains built-in engineering rules for products across CIENA's portfolio, enabling efficient and cost-effective network planning and deployment. From network planners to operations personnel to deployment teams, ON-Designer allows service providers to design, validate and deploy networks, based on CIENA's LightWorks next-generation architecture, in just minutes.

"Automation and integration are two important processes to fixing the current network model, particularly related to bringing new services online faster and with greater overall efficiency," said Brian VanSteen, principal at PointEast Research. "CIENA has already established itself as a leader in software for automating and managing intelligent networks, and now ON-Designer furthers CIENA's value proposition by taking automated, integrated network planning and design to a higher level."

In today's environment, networks are generally planned and designed in a lengthy process that includes manual gathering of network information and numerous calculations and analyses of the data. The error-prone process can take weeks, or even months, to design, validate and turn-up networks - which delays time-to-revenue, lengthens customer wait times for new services, and keeps operational costs high. ON-Designer's Automation Engine and import/export capabilities automatically turn validated network designs into live networks in seconds. ON-Designer, which can run on nearly any desktop or laptop computer, also includes a database for archived network information that can be shared between network planning, engineering, ordering and other internal organizations for efficient, seamless planning and maintenance.

ON-Designer is the latest development in CIENA's LightWorks Services strategy to help service providers use their existing infrastructure to make current services more profitable and to capitalize on new opportunities in enterprise data services without overlay data networks. By simplifying and automating the entire design and planning process, ON-Designer helps service providers offer new services more quickly while helping to increase overall cost-efficiency and service profitability.

"We are focused on growing our customer relationships based on strategic, service-oriented network planning - as we've already begun doing with customers such as AT&T and BT - rather than single-product deployments," said Francois Locoh-Donou, vice president of marketing at CIENA. "As more customers turn to CIENA for strategic, multi-product network solutions based on our next-generation architecture, ON-Designer delivers the essential integration of planning and design tools across our platforms while also improving overall network profitability."

ON-Designer simplifies or eliminates many of the complexities of designing end-to-end networks while ensuring optimal network utilization and survivability. A simple graphical user interface (GUI) enables quick inputs for service requirements and network constraints so ON-Designer can optimize designs based on unique needs. The system then validates the network through full physical simulations. Validated designs can be automatically turned-up by ON-Designer to dramatically reduce deployment and provisioning times while ensuring that networks are built exactly as designed.

ABOUT CIENA

CIENA Corporation delivers innovative network solutions to the world's largest service providers, increasing the cost-efficiency of current services while enabling the creation of new carrier-class data services built upon the existing network infrastructure. Additional information about CIENA can be found at www.ciena.com.

NOTE TO INVESTORS

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements based on current expectations, forecasts and assumptions of CIENA (the Company) that involve risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements in this release, including but not limited to the features and benefits of CIENA's products, are based on information available to the Company as of the date hereof. The Company's actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied in such forward-looking statements, due to risks and uncertainties associated with the Company's business, which include the risk factors disclosed in the Company's Report on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on May 22, 2003. Forward looking statements include statements regarding the Company'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. The Company assumes no obligation to update the information included in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.