New Delhi, May 1 (IANS): Networking, systems and software company Ciena on Monday said it has appointed Amit Malik as Vice President and Sales Leader for India, as it helps drive network transformation to support service providers' 5G plans and growing bandwidth demands.

Malik is responsible for driving the sales strategy in India, a key growth market for Ciena. He reports to Jamie Jefferies, who leads Ciena's international business.

"India is an important market for Ciena driven by significant growth in bandwidth demand on our customers' networks as well as our large Research & Development (R&D) centre in the country," said Jamie Jefferies, Ciena's Vice President and General Manager of International Sales.

"Amit's deep expertise and proven track record in the telecommunications sector will be instrumental in building on our success in India as we support the country's digital transformation journey and adoption of transformative technologies like 5G," he added.

Malik joins Ciena from Cisco Systems, where he held various leadership roles.

He was previously Co-chair of the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) (IT committee) and Vice Chair for the American Chamber.

Ciena has been actively involved in India for more than 15 years with a growing customer base, including all the local Tier 1 service providers. India is also home to one of the company's largest R&D centres of excellence.