RESTON, Va., Feb. 27 — Carahsoft Technology Corp., the trusted government IT solutions provider and Ciena Corporation, the network specialist, today announced a partnership through which the companies will work together to help government agencies reduce network costs and enable a shift toward assured and efficient high-performance networking platforms that enable data center consolidation, cloud computing and high-speed enterprise networking.

Under the terms of the agreement, Carahsoft will function as Ciena’s aggregator and distributor to government customers. In this role, Carahsoft will serve as Ciena’s master U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) Schedule holder and will provide proactive sales, marketing and contract management support for Ciena’s expanding ecosystem of public sector channel partners, resellers and integrators. This partnership will help Ciena’s BizConnect partners that sell to the U.S. government by providing streamlined operations and a single point of contact for maintenance contracts and renewals.

As an example of the success of this valued partnership, Carahsoft and Ciena recently worked together to upgrade the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) and the Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP)’s Pacific Wave international network peering facility leveraging Ciena’s 6500 Packet-Optical Platform, equipped with WaveLogic Coherent Optical Processors. This deployment will provide 100G networking capabilities to Pacific Wave's extensive research and education (R&E) network infrastructure across the western coast of the United States, from Los Angeles to Seattle.

“Through this partnership, federal agencies will have a streamlined contract process and be better positioned to tackle some of their toughest networking challenges by leveraging Ciena’s industry-leading packet and optical networking solutions,” said David Peed, vice president and general manager, Ciena Government Solutions, Inc. “Carahsoft’s dedicated team and proven ability to provide strong sales and marketing support within the public sector are second to none, and we look forward to leveraging their expertise to increase demand and awareness for our government solutions.”

From transforming global communications networks to supporting data center consolidation, cloud computing, and big data initiatives, Ciena’s solutions support a full range of mission-critical objectives.

“Agencies are looking for solutions that will help them transition to a simple, more cost-effective network, and Ciena offers them the industry’s most modernized telecommunications networking infrastructure available,” said Craig P. Abod, Carahsoft president. “We are pleased to expand our portfolio with Ciena’s products and services, which are excellent complements to our existing virtualization, big data, and cloud computing offerings.”

Ciena’s products are available immediately on Carahsoft GSA GS-35F-0119Y. For more information, call the Ciena team at Carahsoft at 703-230-7495 or view our webinar Big Data - The Equation for Success.

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.

About Carahsoft
Carahsoft Technology Corp. is the trusted Government IT solutions provider. As a top-ranked GSA Schedule Contract holder, Carahsoft serves as the master government aggregator for many of its best-of-breed vendors, supporting an extensive ecosystem of manufacturers, resellers, and consulting partners committed to helping government agencies select and implement the best solution at the best possible value.

The company’s dedicated Solutions Divisions proactively market, sell and deliver VMware, Symantec, EMC, Adobe, F5 Networks, Open Source, HP, SAP, and Innovative and Intelligence products and services, among others. Carahsoft is consistently recognized by its partners as a top-revenue producer, and is listed annually among the industry's fastest growing firms by CRN, Inc., Washington Technology, Washington Business Journal, and SmartCEO.

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Source: Ciena