Ciena expands Blue Orbit Ecosystem to strengthen support for open, virtualized networks

Adds 30 new industry leaders, includingAkamai, Ammeon, Check Point,EMC, Netrounds, ON.Lab and Sytel Reply

HANOVER, Md.(BUSINESS WIRE) - Aug. 16, 2016: Ciena® (NYSE: CIEN) has added 30 new organizations as members to its Blue Orbit Ecosystem focused on delivering applications and infrastructure platforms for real-world, multi-vendor software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) deployments. Blue Orbit now includes a total of 64 members, who are committed to supporting network operators’ ongoing transformation to open, programmable and virtualized networks.

Additionally, Ciena has expanded Blue Orbit to reflect a greater focus on collaboration between customers and ecosystem members by creating four distinct categories: Blue Orbit Community Member, DevOps Partner, Service Partner, and Technology Partner.

Key Facts:

• Some notable additions to Blue Orbit include: Akamai Technologies, the global leader in Content Delivery Network (CDN) services; Ammeon, a leading IT and Network transformation services company; Check Point Software Technologies, the largest network cyber security vendor globally; EMC, the world’s largest provider of data storage systems; Netrounds, a programmable test and service assurance provider; Open Networking Lab (ON.Lab), a nonprofit organization dedicated to developing tools and platforms and building open source communities to realize the full potential of SDN; and Sytel Reply, a leading consulting, systems integration and digital services company.
• Ciena’s Blue Planet Division enables true end-to-end service orchestration and provides a leading network virtualization, orchestration, and management software suite. The complete list of existing partners can be found here.

Partner Comments:

Anand Parikh, Senior Director of Product Business Development, Akamai Technologies

• “Ciena has developed an excellent program that allows companies to work together to deliver more innovative solutions. Blue Orbit is making it easier to build next-generation networks that meet the current and future needs of network operators and their customers. As a pioneer in virtualized CDN (vCDN) technology, and a member of the Blue Orbit Ecosystem, we look forward to working closely with Ciena and its other partners to promote the importance of vCDN services in next-generation network environments.”

Seán Finlay, Head of Propositions, Ammeon

• “The business agility promise of NFV and SDN has resulted in a rapidly expanding and complex landscape of suppliers and new technologies. The Blue Orbit Ecosystem is an invaluable resource, where service providers can find both the trusted technology solutions and the skilled system integration partners they need for success. We are proud to bring our delivery services and proven expertise to the ecosystem and to help unlock the benefits of network transformation.”

Alon Kantor, Vice President of Business Development at Check Point Software

• “We are excited to engage with Ciena because it is clear they have a vision to meet the next-generation of market demands, as well as the strategy in place to make it a reality. Through our Open Platform for Security (OPSEC) APIs, we look forward to integrating into the Blue Orbit Ecosystem to provide customers the broadest choice of best-of-breed integrated applications and deployment platforms.”

Kelly Kanellakis,General Manager, Telecom Transformation, EMC Corporation

• “EMC values our relationship with Ciena and the ability to leverage Ciena’s low latency packet-optical technology to maximize our customers’ network investments. By joining the Blue Orbit Ecosystem, we confirm our commitment to Ciena and look forward to contributing to our joint goal of building more open, programmable networks.”

Mats Nordlund, CEO & Co-founder, Netrounds

• “As the demand for flexible and agile service creation increases, the importance of assuring services upon activation and throughout the entire lifecycle becomes paramount to meeting customers’ expectations. By integrating Ciena's Blue Planet with Netrounds’ Control Center and traffic-generating Test Agents, communications service providers are able to utilize our API to automate active end-to-end assurance from the perspective of the end user – covering everything from quality monitoring to remote troubleshooting.”

Guru Parulkar, Executive Director & Board Member, ON.Lab

• “ON.Lab and Ciena have been strong partners in our shared mission to help service providers transform their infrastructure. We want to bring datacenter economy and cloud agility to service providers’ infrastructure with open source and open networking. As a founding member of ONOS and CORD, Ciena has continued to show it is ‘all in’ when it comes to bringing our vision to life through its active participation in these open source projects. We appreciate Ciena’s leadership in creating testing infrastructure using its Emulation Cloud. Having the support of leaders in the communications industry is mission critical as it’s the only way we will be able to accelerate innovation and realize the full potential of open source platforms such as ONOS and CORD.”

Alexander Seyf, Partner, Sytel Reply UK

• “Sytel Reply UK has worked alongside Ciena on strategic Future Network projects with communications providers and, as a member of the Blue Orbit Ecosystem, is pleased to work with Ciena to provide open, vendor-agnostic proof-of-concept facilities and expertise for organizations seeking to make unbiased network virtualization choices, in our Future Networks lab in London.”

Ciena Comment:

Jim Brinksma, Vice President, Strategy & Business Development, Blue Planet Division, Ciena

• “Over and over again our customers seek out solutions that prioritize choice and openness to fulfill today’s market demands. Blue Orbit is a reflection of our collaborative approach, and is key to accelerating the development of new, innovative virtualized services. In order to propel our industry forward, we are working alongside these partners to lessen the risk for network operators and to increase the speed of deployments.”