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Calient Networks Expands Manufacturing Efforts to Deliver on Customer Demand
Company Adds World-Class VP of Operations, Assembly/Design Facilities and Test Laboratories

San Jose, Calif., August 21, 2000 – Calient Networks, a leading developer of carrier-class photonic switching systems, has announced a major expansion of its manufacturing capacity to a 23,000 square-foot Class-A facility, which will be used to design, test and manufacture the DiamondWave™ photonic switch. In a related move, Calient announced the appointment of Randall Ziffer as vice president of operations, to direct the company's significantly expanded manufacturing and test operations.

"We now have the ability to independently build our core photonic switch, which will power the DiamondWave 256 switching system and subsequent higher capacity systems," said John Bowers, Calient CTO. "By keeping the initial manufacturing capability in-house, we are able to maintain control of the manufacturing processes and ensure reliability and performance for our customers."

"Every carrier faces enormous pressure to meet their schedules, and they depend on delivery commitments," emphasized Charles Corbalis, Calient CEO and president. "Regardless of chip or component shortfalls that regularly plague the industry at large, carriers expect us to ensure a secure delivery pipeline. We believe fulfilling the ultimate in scalability applies not only to our switch architecture, but also to our supply line, and we intend to deliver it well in advance of our general availability milestones in early 2001."

In line with Calient's move to scale manufacturing capacity and quality to a world-class level, the company has added Randall Ziffer, a seasoned leader in manufacturing processes and supply chain management, to its leadership team as vice president of operations.

"Randy joins us from a highly successful career with Dell, Nokia (Ipsilon) and Sun," continued Corbalis. "His broad experience in high-volume computing platforms and networking equipment make him the ideal individual to drive Calient's manufacturing efforts. He has distinguished himself in global quality assurance and OEM management. Randy and his organization will be a linchpin delivery asset, well-matched to Calient's development team."

Calient has built a high-performance reliability laboratory and successfully completed testing up to ten billion switch cycles, without failure, under accelerated aging and thermal conditions. "Since Q1 of this year we have run extensive testing under harsh environments, such as high humidity, extreme vibration and high temperature," said Bowers. "Not a single mirror has failed to date. This is a testament to the high reliability of our design."

The new Santa Barbara facility includes state-of-the-art design, build, test and interoperability laboratories. Extensive clean room and clean packaging areas to support Calient's projected growth are under construction.

About Calient Networks

Calient Networks is a new developer of intelligent, all-photonic switching systems that help service providers scale their networks for explosive bandwidth demands and deliver a new generation of wavelength services. Calient's architecture will provide a seamless ‘opto-electronic to photonic' migration path that is non-disruptive to legacy operations, and near-term opportunity for carriers to offer revenue-generating services from their photonic infrastructure. Founded in March 1999, the company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For additional information about Calient Networks, visit www.calient.net.