Growth is a core goal of most modern enterprises, and Baltimore-based Ciena Corporation is no exception. Yet as the company continued to grow, senior management found that they were constantly needing to rethink and optimize certain aspects of Ciena's business model. One group which saw the unique opportunity inherent in that challenge was the treasury function.

Ciena operates in the telecommunications technology sector. "We offer the networking systems, software, and services that underlie a communications network," says Thomas Liu, vice president and treasurer. "Our customers are major telecoms and internet content service providers. We enable them to offer communications services to their end users, who are mostly consumers and businesses."

Ciena's technologies are in high demand, as the global need for bandwidth grows exponentially. The company is a market leader in North America and is rapidly expanding its business throughout Asia-Pacific (APAC), Europe, the Middle East, and South America. Ciena is also seeing strong demand for its deep-sea cable offerings, which provide the communications backbones between continents.