Ciena Appoints Karl Horne As CTO, APAC

Ciena Corporation, the network specialist, has announced the appointment of Karl Horne to the role of Chief Technology Officer for Asia Pacific. The appointment follows Ciena’s continued expansion into key Asian markets and further underscores the company’s commitment to the region.

Based out of Hong Kong, Horne will be responsible for network architecture and technology strategies for Ciena in the Asia Pacific region, including Australia, Hong Kong, India, Japan, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and Vietnam.

Anthony McLachlan, Vice President and General Manager, Asia Pacific, said of the appointment, “Our primary focus has always been in bringing value to our customers, helping them to better compete in their market place. As service providers and enterprise customers in Asia look to streamline and modernise their networks against a global tsunami in online applications and solutions, Karl’s career experience makes him a valuable resource and contributor to the organisation’s strategic development in one of the most advanced and highly competitive telecommunications markets in the world. I am proud to have Karl as a member of Ciena’s leadership team. As our Asia Pacific CTO he will help drive Ciena’s expansion in the region and lead our talented group of engineers and developers.”

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“Here in Asia Pacific, Ciena sees many of the same trends that are challenging service providers and enterprises across the globe. Namely, as services and connectivity require higher bandwidths, but with more agility and resilience needs, it is becoming increasingly important for networks to be highly scalable, intelligent, and robust,” said Horne.

“Ciena’s focus has historically been, and continues to be, on bringing those attributes into a multi-layer environment, including Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) to Optical Transport Network (OTN) to Ethernet and Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) networking. Our industry-leading portfolio allows our customers to deploy the most cost-effective yet flexible networks not only as intelligent infrastructure, but also as turn-key service engines. Ultimately, this gives them the ability to compete more effectively with richer service catalogs and contain total cost of ownership to optimise CAPEX and OPEX efficiencies,” he added.

Prior to this new role, Horne has served in several capacities within Ciena, including leadership positions in Portfolio Management, Chief Technologist, System Engineering and Product Line Management roles. With more than 22 years of industry experience in telecommunication and technology, he has also held engineering leadership positions with Scientific Atlanta and AT&T Tridom.