Mobily and Ciena Provide Advanced Connectivity Services to Businesses in Saudi Arabia

Next-generation network will transform enterprise service delivery, allowing ultra-high speed data transfers, bandwidth-on-demand and enhanced cloud service access

RIYADH, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and HANOVER, Md., U.S.A. — 02/12/2014

Ciena^® Corporation (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings),  the network specialist, and Etihad Etisalat (Mobily), the leading Saudi  ICT services provider today announced the launch of Mobily’s Advanced Connectivity Services (ACS), which is aimed at the enterprise and public sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).  Delivered over Mobily’s Advanced Generation fiber optic network, ACS delivers a range of packet-optical and OTN services to ensure secure, highly redundant and flexible bandwidth (scaling from 1Gbps to 1Tbps) to support cost-effective transmission of mission-critical applications.

With ACS Mobily’s financial, government, healthcare, education, information technology and manufacturing sector clients have access to ‘bandwidth-on-demand’ connectivity. By leveraging Ciena’s  OPⁿ architecture Mobily is able to adjust network capacity in real-time to meet changing business needs more quickly and enable access to cloud-based services with lower latency, enhanced resiliency and lower costs. For example, this will allow an enterprise to access cloud-based services and securely coordinate IT applications, such as virtual machine (VM) migrations, improving user experience, productivity and business continuity.

Key Facts:

• The fastest growing ICT service provider in the KSA, Mobily owns more than 40 percent of the country’s mobile market. This collaboration with Ciena enables Mobily to extract additional value from its network and can help Mobily to grow its market share in the enterprise segment.

• ACS enables high-performance applications such as storage, large databases and data warehouses, storage backup systems and recovery systems, synchronous and asynchronous network-based storage requirements. It also includes wavelength, carrier Ethernet, and private line services as well as international GDE and international IPLC.

• Mobily will leverage Ciena’s technology and expertise in enabling OTN and wavelength services, Optical and Ethernet VPNs, data center interconnection and in-flight encryption services to provide ACS. Ciena’s OneControl Unified Management System, which can reduce installation and provisioning times by as much as 75 percent, supports the rapid deployment of the new service. In addition, with Ciena’s cloud-based portal feature, enterprises can also have real-time visibility and service monitoring as well as direct access to SLA reports.
• Mobily’s ACS services are enabled by the company’s next-generation network that leverages Ciena’s portfolio – including Converged Packet Optical, Optical Transport Networking, Packet Networking, and OneControl Unified Management System, as well as support from Ciena’s Network Transformation Solutions practice. Ciena and Mobily have been working together since the provider’s inception. Mobily is a member of Ciena’s BizConnect partner program. In December 2013, the two companies completed a live 1Tb/s live field trial across Riyadh in KSA.

Executive Comments:

• “Mobily has transformed the mobile market in the KSA and is equally determined to carry this change through to the enterprise connectivity market. Our partnership with Ciena is making this transformation possible; not only through its technology, but more importantly, its ability to decipher the challenges we face in our business and with our end customers and turn them into growth opportunities.”
  – Mohammed Basafi, chief technology officer at Mobily

• “Enterprises and public sector organizations in the Middle East are hungry for services that are designed to their specific requirements and are easily available and scalable when needed. Mobily is making this possible, monetizing its network to offer market-leading enterprise services with the support of a network that has been purpose-built for the cloud era. Dynamic organizations will now have access to managed service offerings that quickly adapt to their ever-changing requirements as well as comprehensive OVPN and bandwidth-on-demand connectivity services.”
  – Omar Alsaied, country manager and Middle East carriers sales director at Ciena

Supporting Resources:

• White Paper: Monetizing Networks in the Cloud Era
• White Paper: Outsourcing Mission-Critical Network Management and Operations
• Video: Ciena OPⁿ Network Architecture
• Video: Scaling networks with 40/100G
• Video: Optical Transport Network
• Overview: OneControl: Management the way it should be
• Webinar: Take 10: Packet Networking

About Mobily
Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) was established in 2004 by a consortium led by Etisalat, the UAE based telecom conglomerate. Mobily is the official brand name of Etihad Etisalat, renowned as innovative ICT service provider in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The awarded 25-Year telecommunication mobile license was complemented by a subsequent purchase of a 3G license. Mobily is the 1st Saudi communications company to get an operation license for 3rd generation services and beyond. In December 2004, Mobily was listed on Tadawul Stock Exchange. Today, Mobily equates to 40%+ market share of the mobile subscriptions in the Kingdom.  In March 2008, Mobily was granted approval by CITC (Communication and Information Technology Commission) to acquire Bayanat al-Oula which was a licensed Data Service Provider for a price of SAR 1.5 Billion. And, in November 2008, Mobily acquired absolute majority stakes in Zajil, the leading Saudi ISP (Internet Service Provider).

Mobily owns vast majority shares in the Saudi National Fiber Network (SNFN) composed with more than 16,200 KM of structured fiber cable, panned into fully meshed links with 40G/100G coherent systems connecting more than 35 Saudi cities plus access to 60 major hub sites for telecommunications prime points of presence, and complimented with more than 100 inter-metropolis fiber loops in major Saudi cities. Furthermore, Mobily is a lead investor in prime global submarine cable AAE-1 projects that are expected to be operational by 2016.

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 http://www.linkedin.com/company/ciena. 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-K, which Ciena filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on December 20, 2013. 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.

Liv Nixon
Ciena
+44 207 012 5869
onixon@ciena.com

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