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Ciena history
Ciena company history timeline
General Instrument, burdened with a heavy debt load, abandoned the technology in 1992.
Ciena was founded in 1992 under the name HydraLite by electrical engineer David R. Huber.
1993: Investor Jon Bayless sees telecom potential of wave-division multiplexing (WDM) technology.
Bayless hired former Optilink CFO Pat Nettles, another Ph.D. physicist, as the company's CEO in February 1994.
Sevin Rosen offered funding immediately, investing $1.25 million in April 1994.
The name of the company was changed to Ciena in 1994.
Ciena had sold $54.8 million in products to Sprint alone by November 1996.
Local exchange carriers, not long distance companies, were expected to make the most use of WDM technology as their fiber optic assets were more limited and they had recently been mandated by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to provide wholesale services to new competitors.
In March 1998, Nettles and Michael Birck of Tellabs began discussing a possible merger.
Financial performance and shareholder disapproval were cited in the media as reasons for the abandoned acquisition proposal in September 1998.
By the end of fiscal 1999, CIENA's customer base had increased to 27 companies; Sprint and WorldCom together accounted for less than half of total sales.
The company acquired Cupertino, California-based Lightera Networks Inc. and Marlborough, Massachusetts-based Omnia Communications Inc. for $980 million in stock in 1999.
The failed AT&T deal and Tellabs merger were serious, albeit temporary, setbacks for CIENA. By June 2000, CIENA's stock was trading at an incredible $120 per share, giving it a market capitalization approaching $20 billion.
The company raised $1.52 billion by selling 11 million shares of stock and $600 million in convertible bonds in 2001.
AT&T, which previously tested select Ciena equipment, signed a supply agreement in 2001.
In 2002, Ciena reported $361.1 million in sales and a loss of $1.59 billion, and had approximately 3,500 employees.
The company was the fourth largest producer of fiber optic equipment in the United States by 2003.
Ciena acquired the Ottawa-based data storage networking company Akara Corp. for $45 million in 2003.
Catena Networks and New Jersey-based Internet Photonics were purchased by Ciena in 2004.
Ciena opened a campus in Gurgaon, India, in 2006.
In 2008, Ciena earned $902 million and reported a profit of $39 million.
The company earned $653 million and reported a loss of $580 million in 2009; Ciena was generating approximately two-thirds of its revenue in the United States at the time.
Ciena had net losses until 2015, when the company earned $2.4 billion in sales and posted a $12 million profit.
The assets of TeraXion Inc., a network management system company based in Quebec City, were purchased for $32 million in 2016.
Ciena acquired Packet Design, an Austin-based network performance management software company specializing in network optimization, route analytics, and topology, in 2016.
In 2017, Ciena's 1,600 Ottawa personnel were relocated to a new campus in Kanata, Ontario, along with employees of Catena.
In 2018, Ciena purchased software and services company DonRiver for an undisclosed amount.
The campus focuses on research and development, and was further expanded in 2018 to begin manufacturing products for local markets.
In 2019, Bharti Airtel used Ciena equipment to build a 130,000 km photonic control plane network, connecting more than 4,000 locations in India.
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Ciena competitors
| Company name | Founded date | Revenue | Employee size | Job openings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tellabs | 1974 | $1.1B | 1,290 | - |
| EXFO | 1985 | $265.6M | 1,900 | - |
| Nokia Networks Inc | 1993 | - | 1,119 | - |
| Lucent | 1996 | $9.4B | 30,500 | 4 |
| Ericsson | 1876 | $25.5B | 100,824 | 32 |
| NextWave Wireless | 1995 | - | 750 | - |
| Nokia | 1865 | $20.8B | 103,083 | 343 |
| SeaChange International | 1993 | $32.5M | 281 | 1 |
| Tekelec | 1971 | $424.0M | 1,140 | - |
| Sonus | 1997 | $252.6M | 1,152 | 4 |
Ciena history FAQs
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Ciena may also be known as or be related to Ciena, Ciena Corp and Ciena Corporation.