Ciena was founded in 1992 under the name
HydraLite by electrical engineer
David R. Huber.
Optelecom, an optical networking company and Huber's former employer, provided management assistance and production facilities, Huber engaged William K. Woodruff & Co. to present the idea to John Bayless at Sevin Rosen in November 1993 which resulted in Sevin Rosen investing $1.25 million in April 1994. William K. Woodruff & Co. was a co-manager of Ciena's IPO in February 1997. Bayless recruited physicist Patrick Nettles, a former colleague at the telecommunications company Optilink, to serve as Ciena's first CEO, and Lawrence P. Huang, another former colleague, to accept the sales chief role. Huber and Nettles, changed the company's name to Ciena, in 1994. They began working from an office in
Dallas in February 1994; Huber would remain with Ciena until 1995. At $195 million, the company's first-year sales were the highest ever recorded by a startup at the time. The company's headquarters were relocated to Maryland in March 1997. in September 1998 with financial performance and shareholder disapproval cited in the media as reasons.
Since 2000s During the
telecoms crash, Ciena's annual sales decreased from $1.6 billion to approximately $300 million. To address the company's challenges this presented, Gary Smith replaced Nettles as the company's CEO in 2001, and Nettles became executive chairman. The company raised $1.52 billion by selling 11 million shares of stock and $600 million in
convertible bonds in 2001. Ciena was the second largest fiber optic networking equipment producer in the U.S. at the time. While many telecommunications companies experienced downturns during the early 2000s, Ciena's cash influx provided flexibility and allowed the company to expand its product portfolio to include a broader range of advanced networking solutions and other technologies. spending more than $2 billion to purchase five networking technology companies during 2001 to 2004. and had approximately 3,500 employees. The company was the fourth largest producer of fiber optic equipment in the U.S. by 2003. In 2003, a federal court jury determined that Corvis Corporation, another fiber optic telecommunications equipment provider established by Huber in 1997, infringed a patent owned by Ciena. Ciena had net losses until 2015, when the company earned $2.4 billion in sales and posted a $12 million profit. Ciena earned $2.8 billion in revenue in 2017,
Acquisitions Ciena acquired the telecommunications company AstraCom Inc. in 1997 for $13.1 million. Fourteen of AstraCom's engineers signed four-year contracts with Ciena, and joined the company's new
research and development team in
Alpharetta, Georgia. In early 1998, the company acquired
Norcross, Georgia–based ATI Telecom International Ltd. and its subsidiary Alta Telecom in a transaction worth $52.5 million. Alta's engineering and installation products were used by service providers for switching, transport, and
wireless communications; the company continued to operate as a subsidiary of Ciena. Ciena purchased Terabit Technology Inc., a producer of detectors for data transmission based in
Santa Barbara, California, for $11.7 million in April 1998. The company acquired
Cupertino, California–based Lightera Networks Inc. and
Marlborough, Massachusetts–based Omnia Communications Inc. for $980 million in stock in 1999. The company purchased Cyras Corp. of
Fremont, California, during 2000 to 2001 for $2 billion in stock. ONI Systems, a
San Jose, California–based producer of phone and computer data equipment, was acquired by Ciena for $900 million in stock in June 2002. The acquisitions of Cyras, which produced
optical switch systems, and ONI, which made transport equipment for data transfer, allowed Ciena to focus on networks in metropolitan areas. Ciena acquired the
Ottawa-based data storage networking company Akara Corp. for $45 million in 2003. Akara expanded Ciena's product line and storage networking capabilities, and continued to operate as a subsidiary. Catena Networks and
New Jersey–based Internet Photonics were purchased by Ciena in 2004. The stock transactions were valued at $486.7 million and $150 million, respectively. Catena had approximately 220 employees at the time, and the purchase of Internet Photonics marked Ciena's entrance into the cable industry. In 2008, Ciena acquired World Wide Packets Inc. (WWP), a
Spokane Valley, Washington–based producer of switches and software for Ethernet services, for approximately $296 million. WWP offered the LightningEdge
operating system and network management tools, and had more than 100 customers in 25 countries at the time. WWP became a whole owned subsidiary, and the company's office and 65 employees in
Spokane, Washington were used by Ciena until mid 2018. Ciena acquired
Nortel's optical technology and
Carrier Ethernet division for approximately $770 million during 2009 to 2010. Nortel's Metro Ethernet Networks business developed next-generation optical-transmission equipment and had more than 1,000 customers in 65 countries at the time. The business had approximately 1,400 employees in Canada, including 1,125 in Ottawa and 250 in
Montreal. In 2017, Ciena's 1,600 Ottawa personnel were relocated to a new campus in
Kanata, Ontario, along with employees of Catena. These 1,600, many of whom worked for Nortel, comprise less than 30 percent of Ciena's workforce, but represent the company's largest operational hub and complete half of its research and development work. 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 2018, Ciena purchased software and services company DonRiver for an undisclosed amount.
Operations in India Ciena opened a campus in
Gurgaon, India, in 2006. The campus focuses on research and development, and was further expanded in 2018 to begin manufacturing products for local markets. There were approximately 1,500 employees on site, representing 20 percent of the company's global workforce, as of May 2018. 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. Ciena provides converged packet optical and Ethernet services to Bharti Airtel,
Jio, and
Vodafone Idea Limited, and supplies equipment to the
Government of India, as of mid 2019. Rajesh Nambiar was named the chairman and president of Ciena India in mid 2019 until October 2020. ==Products==