The company said its new unit, called Ciena Government Solutions (CGSI), will consolidate some of its engineering, support and professional service resources in a separate entity that will develop flexible network technology for government customers.
Ciena appointed Rob Rice, who served as 3Com’s vice president of federal sales, as vice president of the new CGSI subsidiary. Rice will be responsible for building Ciena’s government business by expanding the company’s existing relationships with Department of Defense (DoD) agencies and others within the federal, state and local marketplaces.
The unit was created as a result of an agreement with the DoD, which deployed Ciena’s network for its GIG-BE project. Ciena said it is meeting an aggressive deployment schedule for the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), which will enable the agency to continue meeting its goals for testing and implementation under delivery and deployment timelines.
Government agencies find themselves at the intersection of conflicting requirements, increasing the capacity and multiservice capabilities of their networks while reducing network costs and complexity, said Rice. The proximity of Ciena’s corporate headquarters to the Capital Beltway enables us to closely collaborate with our partners and federal government organizations to design network solutions that meet their requirements for assured, scalable and high-performance networks.
