More Than Two-thirds of Asian Enterprises Demand Bandwidth of at Least 100 Mbps to the Data Center

To support new data centers across Asia Pacific, network operators are in a race to provide the needed capacity and services to support businesses’ web-scale demands, according to a Ciena^® (NYSE:CIEN)-commissioned Asia/Pacific WAN and Communications Survey conducted by International Data Corporation (IDC), a leading provider of global IT research and advice. The survey revealed that more than 70 percent of data centers across Asia are now served by networks that offer speeds greater than 100Mbps to the enterprises. Connectivity varies by market, with Singapore and Korea boasting the highest proportion of superfast 1Gbps+ data center to enterprise connections that are ready to support next-generation requirements such as virtualization and mobility.

The findings of this survey illustrate the motivations of CIOs and IT decision makers of Asia-Pacific businesses to invest in their networks during the next year, revealing that increasing productivity and improving business processes are the top reasons.

Key Findings:

• According to the study, Singapore and Korea have the fastest data centers in the region with more than two in five boasting networks with connections faster than 1Gbps to enterprise customers, while in Thailand and China the figure is one in three. This bandwidth is needed to enable next-generation technologies such as virtualization, cloud, security, business continuity / disaster recovery and mobility.

• Disaster recovery was noted as a top concern and the most commonly cited reason for businesses to increase network investment in the data center. The emphasis on disaster recovery points to how critical network infrastructure can be to the operations of a business. It is also influenced by new regulations, especially in sensitive sectors such as communications, banking, government and healthcare.

• Data centers in the region are becoming more interconnected and are often used for off-site storage and data back-up, resulting in increasing appetite for data center interconnect solutions. In the study, data center providers cited ease of management, scalability and cost as the top three reasons for choosing a data center interconnect solution.

• As Asian businesses put more data into the cloud, they are beginning to operate multiple clouds. Because of this, more importance is being placed on being able to work across hybrid environments and spreading workloads between data centers.

• According to Ciena, Asia’s enterprises expect on-demand, high quality and real-time access to multimedia content via a multitude of applications across a wide range of devices. All that content lives in the data center. This explosion of data requires sophisticated technologies designed to provide high speed connectivity, help businesses scale rapidly and are easy to manage. With new Data Center Interconnect (DCI) solutions businesses can easily connect their data centers regardless of distance, whether they are in the same metro region or across the continent, while gaining operational efficiencies and lowering costs.

Executive Comments:

• “With virtualization, mobility and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) picking up, today's networks have become the lifeblood of an enterprise. Business agility, speed, and performance are all dependent on the underlying network infrastructure. This study demonstrates that for Asian enterprises the network is moving away from the IT silo toward serving as a key driver for successful business outcomes.”
  - Karl Horne, CTO, Asia Pacific, Ciena

• "Rapid economic growth in Asian is driving both top-line and regional business expansion. Enterprises are increasingly focused on meeting rising demand for hybrid networks that deliver speed, agility and performance. The emerging on-demand paradigm is driving huge changes in the IT environment with the data center set to be one of the critical enablers of this shift."
  - Shiv Putcha, Associate Director, Service Provider & Connected Consumer Research, IDC Asia-Pacific

About the Survey:

• The Asia/Pacific WAN and Communications Survey was commissioned by Ciena and surveyed 1,400 senior IT decision makers from large enterprises in 14 markets in the Asia Pacific region: Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

• Ten      percent of the companies surveyed have more than 1,000 employees and 30      percent between 250 and 1,000.

• The      survey was conducted by IDC in October 2015.

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 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 March 9, 2016. 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.