Ciena^® Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEN), the network specialist, today announced that proxy materials for its 2013 Annual Meeting of Stockholders to be held Wednesday, March 20, 2013 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern time are now available via the Internet. In addition to providing proxy materials online, this year's Annual Meeting will be Ciena's first completely virtual meeting of stockholders to be webcast live over the Internet at www.virtualshareholdermeeting.com/ciena. Ciena believes that its use of the Internet to host its meeting and facilitate distribution of materials enables expanded stockholder participation, expedites receipt of proxy materials and reduces the cost and environmental impact of the company's Annual Meeting.

Ciena stockholders as of the January 22, 2013 record date for the Annual Meeting will be mailed a "Notice Regarding the Availability of Proxy Materials" and will be entitled to attend, vote and submit questions at the Annual Meeting by entering the 12-digit control number included in their notice. The notice will also include instructions for accessing Ciena's proxy materials online or requesting paper copies of the materials. Ciena stockholders not entitled to vote at this year's Annual Meeting and other interested persons may listen to the live webcast of the 2013 Annual Meeting at www.virtualshareholdermeeting.com/ciena and can view Ciena's 2012 Annual Report and proxy statement on the company's website at: http://investor.ciena.com/annuals-proxy.cfm.

About Ciena

Ciena 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 OPⁿ, its approach for building open 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. We routinely post recent news, financial results and other important announcements and information about Ciena on our website. For more information, visit www.ciena.com.