China Unicom's Zhejiang Branch Selects CIENA Storage Solution to Manage Disaster Recovery and Restoration.

LINTHICUM, Md. and BEIJING -- CIENA's CN 2600 Multiservice Platform to Extend Zhejiang Unicom's Data Center; Agreement Marks CIENA's First Significant Entry Into Data Services in China

CIENA(R) Corporation (NASDAQ:CIEN), a leading global provider of innovative network solutions, today announced that Zhejiang Unicom, a subsidiary of China Unicom, has selected CIENA's CN 2600(TM) Multiservice Edge Aggregator (formerly known as ONLINE Edge) to support storage area network (SAN) extension for its data center disaster recovery and restoration plans.

"Zhejiang China Unicom's next-generation disaster recovery architecture needed to ensure that they experienced seamless, uninterrupted service during any eventuality," said Dr Jianhui Zhou, corporate vice president and general manager of CIENA's China operations. "CIENA's CN 2600 enables them to extend their SAN infrastructure across the wide area for improved business continuity in the most reliable, intelligent and cost-effective manner possible."

Utilizing CIENA's CN 2600 multiservice platform, which delivers service transparency through coarse wavelength division multiplexing (CWDM) technology, Zhejiang Unicom is implementing a distance backup solution to support remote business continuity measures and dramatically improve recovery performance in the event of unplanned downtime. CIENA's storage extension technology plays an important role in this effort by linking Zhejiang Unicom's primary data center to a back-up data center, located more than 80 kilometers away, within the company's SAN architecture.

"Zhejiang Unicom's disaster recovery system required highly reliable connectivity between geographically distributed sites to protect their data centers," said Daniel Zhang, Director, system integration and R&D center of Qware, a systems integrator and partner of CIENA on this project. "CIENA's CN 2600 provides a robust network infrastructure that precisely matches Zhejiang Unicom's need for a cost-effective and resilient transport platform for extending its SAN over distance."

"Zhejiang Unicom's selection of the CN 2600 platform for its disaster recovery solution demonstrates CIENA's progress in our transformation beyond a provider of intelligent optical networking solutions," said Dr. Zhou. "As part of our strategic evolution to a leading provider of intelligent service creation and delivery solutions, CIENA is integrating data-focused network solutions, like storage extension, into our comprehensive product portfolio. This win from a respected Chinese company is another illustration of the global acceptance that CIENA has received for its data services solutions."

About CIENA's Storage Extension Solutions

CIENA offers the industry's most cost-effective, highest performance solutions for storage extension and data connectivity requirements, including the CN 2000(TM) Storage Extension Platform for SONET/SDH applications, CN 2600 Multiservice Edge Aggregator for CWDM applications, and ONLINE Metro(TM) Multiservice Platform for DWDM applications. With these solutions, CIENA meets the needs of enterprises to deliver proven remote business continuance, disaster recovery, replication, and backup storage extension solutions that scale as application requirements evolve and extension requirements grow.

ABOUT CIENA

CIENA Corporation delivers innovative network solutions to the world's largest service providers, cable operators and enterprises, 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.

ABOUT ZHEJIANG UNICOM

Zhejiang Unicom is a subsidiary of China Unicom in the Zhejiang province and is primarily responsible for the construction of telecommunications infrastructure as well as network operations and business development. Zhejiang Unicom currently operates offices in Hangzhou, Ningbo, Wenzhou, Taizhou, Huzhou, Jiazing, Jinhua, Shaoxing, Zhoushan, Lishui and Quzhou. Zhejiang Unicom is instrumental in accelerating the development of data communications, long distance calls and other value-added telecommunications services in China. Additional information about Zhejiang Unicom can be found at www.zj165.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 the Company'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 20, 2004. 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.