Continuing its efforts to help customers deliver automated and programmable end-to-end services across physical and virtual domains, Ciena® (NYSE: CIEN) will offer a fully-supported commercial version of the Open Networking Operating System (ONOS). Blue Planet ONOS will extend Ciena’s Blue Planet network orchestration software to enable highly-scalable, flow-based control of data center networks.

Key Facts:

  • ONOS, backed by ON.Lab and several leading service providers and vendors, is a complete open source, carrier-grade, SDN operating system that enables agile service creation and deployment at scale on any hardware. This disruptive platform delivers a highly available, scalable SDN control plane featuring northbound and southbound open APIs that can enable diverse management, control, and service applications across mission-critical networks.
  • An early and notable application for ONOS is the Central Office Re-Architected as a Data Center (CORD) project. CORD provides the framework for service providers to re-architect their traditional central offices into next-generation data centers. This is critical as service providers move to enable much greater network and service programmability by leveraging SDN and virtualization technologies. The ultimate goal is to provide end customers with next-generation, on-demand services and content that leverage a lower cost web-scale infrastructure.
  • Ciena’s hardened version of ONOS, to be marketed as Blue Planet ONOS, gives service providers the ability to take advantage of the cumulative software expertise of the open source community combined with the level of assurance and support that users require for commercial deployment. Blue Planet ONOS is backed by Ciena’s world-class software, service and support teams. Any enhancements Ciena makes to ONOS for customer engagements will be fed back into the open source community. Ciena’s Blue Planet ONOS, which aligns with the Falcon release of ONOS, is projected to be available in the first calendar quarter of 2016.

Executive Comments:

  • “Our mission at the ONOS project has been to produce an open source network operating system that enables service providers and vendors to build real software-defined networks. We are excited that Ciena, a recognized leader and advocate for open, programmable networks, will bring this vision to market with Blue Planet ONOS and really appreciate its commitment to contributing bug fixes and enhancements back to open source. In one short year, we have gone from inception to commercial maturity – this is a validation of the power of open source innovation.”
    -   Guru Parulkar, Co-Founder and Executive Director ON.Lab and Chairman of the ONOS Board
  • “As with all Blue Planet software development and support, Ciena embarked on this effort with the LINUX Foundation and ON.Lab as a result of customer demand and engagements. Ciena’s support of ONOS re-affirms our commitment to open source technology and reflects our position as a leader in the global, software-based network transformation movement.”
    -   Mike Hatfield, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Blue Planet, Ciena and Director on the ONOS Project Board of Directors
  • “Ciena has been working with ON.Lab and its service provider members since its inception, so it is a natural next step to bring ONOS and Blue Planet together. We believe that having a commercially hardened version of ONOS that is fully backed by Ciena software, service and support personnel will instill confidence in our customers that they have the right combination to adopt network virtualization technologies with greater ease.”
    -   Francois Locoh-Donou, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Ciena

Supporting Resources:

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. 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-Q, which Ciena filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on September 9, 2015. 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.