#Ciena25: Best Wishes from Some Amazing Customers: Ciena's Virtual Birthday Card

If you haven’t noticed, 2017 is a pretty big year for Ciena. In  addition to opening our new R&D  center in Ottawa, rolling out new  offerings and announcing new partnerships, this  November officially marks our 25th year doing business.

25 years is a long time. For anything. In fact, it’s over 9,100 days (who  do you know today that you knew 9,000 days ago?).

As part of our yearlong celebration of this incredible milestone, a  few of our oldest friends (they’re customers too) sent over their best wishes  for our big day. We decided to share a few of their kind words as a virtual  “birthday card” below. We would never have arrived at the place we are today  without the support and partnership of all of our customers throughout the last  25 years. This celebration is as much about you as it is us. So, from all of  us at Ciena, thank you. And here’s to the next 9,000 days.

“As an industry leader, Verizon looks to collaborate with  organizations with the same drive, innovative thinking and focus on quality  that we have. We recently expanded our work with Ciena with our announcement  that they would be one of two vendors supporting our next-generation metro 100G  rollout in the U.S. We applaud the innovative technologies Ciena has introduced  in the last 25 years and look forward to seeing what we can build together in  the next 25.”


- Glenn  Wellbrock, Director of Optical Transport Network Architecture, Design &  Planning, Verizon

“Given its continued passion to create the highest quality solutions,  it is no surprise that Ciena has been a part of many industry-firsts over the  past quarter of a century. In our own quest to innovate and meet growing  customer demand, it seemed natural for Southern Cross to partner with Ciena.  Together we have hit many milestones - from upgrading our submarine network to  40Gbps, 100Gbps and 200Gbps technology to our first entrance into the SDN area.  In fact, our recent announcement of Gigaflex Elastic  bandwidth-on-demand capability is supported by Ciena’s Blue Planet V-WAN.  Finding a good partner is not easy, and we are happy to have found a great one  in Ciena.”

-  Dean  Veverka, Director Networks & Vice President Operations, Southern Cross

“Connecting  the world has changed a great deal in the 25 years since Colt emerged as a  disruptor in the market. Today, we are a proud leader in enabling our  customer’s digital transformations through agile, high-bandwidth connectivity across the globe. Working with the most innovative partners to maintain a  technological edge in high-bandwidth connectivity and a best in class customer  experience is critical to our strategy. Ciena is one of the strategic partners  Colt relies on to enable our customers to connect them with their critical  cloud ecosystems in a secure, reliable manner. By working with innovators like  Ciena, Colt is able to meet not only the ever-increasing demand for more  bandwidth but also introduce entirely new consumption models such as on-demand  connectivity.”

-  Carl  Grivner, Chief Executive Officer, Colt

“Collaboration  enables innovation. What seemed impossible 25 years ago, is now a reality  because of the vision and work of the people and organizations in the research  and education community. When we were looking to create America’s first 100G  national research and education network years ago, Ciena rolled up its sleeves  from the start, and continued all the way through to the launch of our  production network, bringing many valuable insights along the way. We  applaud them for the spirit of collaboration, innovation and partnership that  they have shown over many years, and we look forward to continuing to connect and  enable the research and education community.”

-  Howard  Pfeffer, President & CEO, Internet2

“Ciena  has become more than a solution provider for BRFibra. In addition to their  optical portfolio enhancing and supporting the growth of our network, they have  achieved the status of a strategic partner to us. We  have worked side by side, understanding the challenges we face in the  Brazilian market and Ciena has collaborated closely with us in developing  strategies to overcome these obstacles. We congratulate Ciena for achieving  such a significant milestone of 25 years of operation.”

-  Jose Paulo  Linné, Chief Executive Officer, BRFibra Telecommunications

Congratulations  to Ciena for 25 successful years. Gary Smith is now the industry’s  longest-running successful CEO, who’s guided Ciena through many industry  changes, with major acquisitions all along the way. These include most recently  Nortel, delivering 100G+ technology and customers to Ciena’s portfolio, and  Cyan, enabling Ciena to become a major player in service provider  transformation of automation and on-demand services underpinned by SDN/NFV.”

-  Michael  Howard, Senior Research Director & Advisor, IHS Markit

Want to “sign” our virtual birthday card and leave a note for us?  Please do so in the comments below.