INDUSTRY INTERVIEW: Ciena Government Solutions Inc.
David Peed
Vice President and Managing Director
Ciena Government Solutions Inc.
David Peed serves as the vice president and managing director of Ciena Government Solutions Inc. (CGSI). Prior to joining Ciena, he served as vice president of sales and business development for Qwest in its government services division. Previously, Peed held several senior positions in the telecommunications sector, and brings nearly 20 years of information technology and sales experience in the civilian and defense industries. He holds a master’s degree in information systems from Johns Hopkins University and a Bachelor of Arts in business administration from Towson State University.
Q: How would you describe Ciena and its overall approach to government markets?
A: Ciena serves as a truly strategic partner to the government, rather than simply as a vendor. We look at our partnership with government from a holistic perspective, and we also see four clear and distinct vertical markets: research and education, civilian, Department of Defense and special classified programs. We’re working hard to align with where we envision those vertical markets going over the next one to three years, and map our direction as closely as possible to the roadmap and vision of our government customers.
Secondly, my personal philosophy in dealing with the federal government is that if you do what’s right for the customer, the business aspect will in essence take care of itself. Over my career, customers have reached out and asked for support, and often I have been able to provide help, even knowing that what I was doing for them was not going to directly drive revenue to the company. That’s what being a good partner is all about. What we’re doing is very important, but the mission of many government customers on a daily basis is broader and more important than what I’m doing. By being a reliable partner and helping them with their requirements, the business side will take care of itself.
Q: You recently took over as managing director of Ciena Government Solutions. What are some of your key goals, and what is your strategy for achieving them?
A: The first goal is to develop a baseline assessment for where we see the customer networking needs growing. The government market has huge potential for Ciena, and the focus will be to achieve a common understanding of how Ciena’s vision for the road ahead can help us position for new opportunities in advancing government networks. For example, we’ve had tremendous success working with the research and education community, and I’m excited about our role in helping to advance scientific computing in some of the world’s foremost institutions. Additionally, we are continuing to focus on becoming a more integrated partner with the DoD and intelligence community.
Q: What distinguishes your company from others offering network services to defense and government customers?
A: I think several things distinguish us. Ciena’s senior management is committed to making the federal government a primary focus for our business, and is dedicated to establishing Ciena as a leader in the market. In fact, our senior vice president of worldwide sales, Mike Aquino, has a long background in government and led the initiative to form CGSI. So the federal government market is a real priority for our senior management. Also, we have one of the most impressive and knowledgeable advisory boards at CGSI, including such industry leaders as Arthur Money, Lieutenant General Kenneth Minihan [Ret.], Larry Spilman and Sandra Bates. Having that level of guidance and breadth of knowledge ultimately benefits our customers as we plan our next steps towards growing our organization. It also helps that Ciena is located in the Washington, D.C., Beltway region, so we’re virtually in the backyard of most federal government agencies.
We’re also very particular about the partners we choose to help us deliver services. Ciena works with partners with industry expertise so our customers aren’t left twisting in the wind.
Finally, from a technology perspective, the distinguishing factors that we provide to the government market are products that form robust, flexible and fully programmable architectures, which allow connections to be nimble to the evolving demands of larger government networks. The architecture that Ciena provides gives agencies a lot of flexibility and automation, simplifying the dayto- day management of architectures, while also scaling to support future growth requirements.
Q: What are some of the ideas Ciena is working on for the future for defense and government customers?
A: We see that the market is moving toward dynamic provisioning of high bandwidth connectivity. Our platforms have the intelligence to automate this provisioning to simplify what, to date, has been a very complex set of operations. We see agency networks moving toward high-bandwidth, very flexible, robust, changing architectures, and we’re the company that can deliver that solution. We also have an intense focus on creating increasingly secure, reliable architectures, which continue to be critical for government agencies. Going forward, in addition to providing the systems, software and services for government networks, we’ve also become very interested in continuing to invest into lines of business that offer professional services and technology research. ♦
