Ciena today announced successful completion of its acquisition of Cyan, a leading provider of next-generation software and platforms to enable open, agile and scalable software-defined networks (SDN).
“Ciena and Cyan make a great combination for our customers as they transform their networks with web-scale technologies to go beyond delivering capacity to create capabilities on demand,” said Gary Smith, president and CEO, Ciena.
“We believe this acquisition advances our strategy to deliver a complete on-demand solution for virtualized networks and services, and greater control and choice for customers in an open ecosystem,” added Smith.
Ciena is committed to leading the industry into a new era of truly open, software-defined, multi-vendor networks. Accordingly, in conjunction with today’s announcement, Ciena is unifying the software activities of both companies under a single brand and set of resources known as the Blue Planet division.
The division, which includes Ciena’s former Agility business, will focus on helping customers automate services – from creation to orchestration to delivery – across both physical and virtual domains, in order to drive greater competitive advantage, create new revenue opportunities, and lower costs associated with hardware and operations.
Mike Hatfield, formerly Cyan’s president, has been appointed to lead the Blue Planet division as a senior vice president of Ciena. The Blue Planet product portfolio includes Cyan’s software applications, including Planet Orchestrate and Planet Operate, as well as Ciena’s SDN Multilayer WAN Controller and its applications, V-WAN, Agility Matrix and network management solutions. The division is comprised of teams responsible for software development, product line management, product marketing, service and support, sales and business development.
Hatfield commented, “Ciena’s Blue Planet division will provide next-generation multi-vendor network management software and service orchestration solutions, for both physical and virtual network functions, to accelerate our customers’ network transformation strategies. Leveraging Ciena’s OPn architecture approach, Blue Planet solutions will reduce network operators’ reliance on closed, costly and complex vertically integrated infrastructures in favor of open, agile, software-controlled network environments.”
Complementing Ciena’s network control and application software technologies, Cyan adds multi-vendor network and service orchestration and next-generation network management software. The Blue Planet portfolio offers a carrier-grade, multi-vendor SDN and NFV platform designed to automate, orchestrate, and manage the lifecycle of virtualized services across data centers and the WAN. It also includes a family of applications designed to control and manage both physical network elements and virtual SDN/NFV resources.
Further strengthening Ciena’s leadership in packet-optical, Cyan brings a growing metro packet-optical business with a complementary base of key customers. The combined capabilities of Ciena and Cyan create even stronger support and greater forward innovation for customers, inclusive of commitments for Cyan’s Z-Series Packet-Optical Platform.
Based on the closing price of Ciena’s common stock on July 31, 2015, the last trading day prior to the closing of the transaction, the aggregate value of the cash and stock consideration paid was approximately $488 million (or $415 million, net of estimated cash acquired) and inclusive of Cyan’s outstanding convertible notes on an as-converted basis.
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