Ciena sets up in Australia

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 23 June 2010 17:10

IT Industry - Market

Optical networking vendor Ciena - which beat Nokia Siemens in the auction for Nortel's optical networking and carrier ethernet business - has opened an office in Australia, largely using ex Nortel staff.

 

Ciena was named as the winning bidder for Nortel's assets in November 2009 with a $US730m bid. The transaction was completed in March 2010.

Ciena's purchase included substantially all product platforms, patents and intellectual property used in the businesses, and provided for the transition of substantially all of Nortel's optical networking and carrier ethernet customer contracts to Ciena. About 2,000 Nortel employees globally, almost 100 percent of those involved in the acquired businesses transferred to Nortel.

Ciena now has offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland. These operations are led by Anthony Mclachlan as vice president and general manager Asia Pacific and, reporting to him, David McDermott regional managing director, Australia and New Zealand.

Both formerly worked for Nortel Australia. Mclachlan will be based in Sydney and McDermott in Melbourne. Prior to the acquisition Ciena had no presence and no customers in Australia and New Zealand.

Globally Ciena has about 4000 employees. Mike Aquino, senior vice president, global field operations at Ciena, declined to give any indication of local staff numbers and would only say: "We have all the sets of people we require including account management, field sales engineers. We have sufficient people to drive the customer experience in the Australia and New Zealand market place."

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