PARIS and LOS ANGELES -- Ekinops, a leading provider of optical transport and aggregation solutions, today announced the appointment of Jonathan Amir as the vice president of sales for the Americas. Amir will open Ekinops west coast sales office in Los Angeles and will be responsible for both direct sales and channel distribution of Ekinops carrier grade solutions.

Ekinops sells next-generation optical network equipment designed to facilitate the aggregation and transport of high-capacity Ethernet (GbE and 10 GbE) and Fibre Channel traffic directly to the DWDM or optical layer of the network. As such, Ekinops simplifies the network by offering a smooth transition from SONET/SDH transport to more efficient Ethernet-over-DWDM transport for the delivery of bandwidth-intensive IP services, including video, data and voice.

Amir has more than a decade of sales, marketing and product line management experience in the telecommunications and networking industry. He was most recently director of sales for MRV Communications (NASDAQ:MRVC), a telecommunications equipment manufacturer, where he helped develop new markets and increased revenues in his area of responsibility more than 800% in two years. In his previous role as Vice President of Marketing for Optical Access, a division of MRV, he led the marketing effort for the company’s last-mile wireless solution.

Jonathan holds a master's degree in business administration from California State University and a bachelor's degree from Tel-Aviv University.

“We are very fortunate to have attracted a person of Jonathan’s caliber to manage sales in the Americas for Ekinops. He has a proven track record in sales and marketing and will be a key contributor to our tremendous growth,” said Didier Bredy, chairman and CEO for Ekinops. “We quadrupled sales in 2005 and are now well positioned to capitalize on the accelerating deployment of Ethernet services in 2006.”

“Ekinops’ solutions improve the way optical networks are designed and substantially lower the cost of DWDM networks,” said Amir. “I look forward to introducing Ekinops solutions to new customers in the US and Canada and help fuel the continued success of the company.”

Ekinops SA