Ciena Launches Partner Network

Ciena has enhanced its award-winning channel partner program to better align with the rapidly changing IT landscape.

With the new Ciena Partner Network (CPN), Ciena is moving away from traditional, “one-size fits all” partner programs to a new collaborative and personalized approach, which is designed to enable and reward all partner business models from a single platform. The CPN program enables Ciena partners to uniquely respond to technology disruptions and market transitions, capture new opportunities, and offer specialized services and solutions.

Key Facts:

  • Companies are automating and/or virtualizing their IT environments to remain competitive, and channel partners’ business plans and training programs must continually adapt to intercept this opportunity. To facilitate this requirement, Ciena’s CPN, the newly unified partner ecosystem and program, will provide greater flexibility and customization to all partners inclusive of managed service providers, resellers, integrators, distributors, or service partners.
  • Built for emerging and future channel market conditions, the CPN program gives partners in-depth, customizable training, enablement resources and collaborative joint business planning – all specifically tailored to the partners’ business requirements. It enables partners to reduce time to market, drive incremental sales, expand technical expertise, and deliver measurable outcomes.
  • In addition, Partner Academy, Ciena’s pioneering training and certification program, guides partners on personalized learner journeys to expand their expertise by offering the same in-depth, comprehensive sales and technical training as Ciena staff.
  • Solution Enablement Toolkits (SETs) provide a collection of sales, marketing and services development resources that enable partners to build specialized Data Center Interconnect (DCI) and Ethernet offerings based on Ciena solutions. Resources include: training, market insights, competitive intelligence, geo-targeting, sales playbooks and exclusive access to industry analysts.

Ciena will onboard more than 200 highly specialized, industry-leading partners into the Ciena Partner Network including Anycomm, CenturyLink, Comcast, Kapsch, LightRiver, Windstream and Zayo.