Doing the business

In July 2010, Orange Group’s CEO Stephane Richard articulated a group-wide industrial project that would give the company a strategic direction in the period 2010-2015. Dubbed Conquests 2015, the telco’s business services unit has set about adapting the parameters of the programme to its respective operating environment, and has met with some early success

Badrinath says growth areas for the business include very high broadband, video, Internet of things (M2M opportunities), cloud computing, mobility, CRM, the workspace of the future, and security 

According to Orange Business Services’ CEO, Vivek Badrinath, some of the key trends driving the business communications market include the development of image and brand identity, the advent and proliferation of mobile applications, IT for green purposes, Generation Y becoming employed, the uptake of collaborative tools and social networks, and world trade beginning to bounce back.

Given such drivers, Orange Business Services is looking to position itself as a communications technology partner to enterprises and corporates across sectors and geographies, emphasising its technology leadership and global reach.

“Telepresence is developing into a huge opportunity in the enterprise market,” Badrinath comments. “Cisco did for telepresence what Apple did with MP3 players, and the entire industry is reaping the benefits of such.”

Orange Business Services is a significant organisation that believes its experience across global markets allows it to add substantial value in localised environments. The company generated €7.6 billion (US$10.45 billion) in revenues in 2009, and counts approximately 20,000 employees, half of who are based in France and the remainder internationally.

The company counts 3,700 multinational customers, 2.7 million enterprise customers in France alone, and more than 323,000 IP VPN access points in 172 countries. More than 1.4 million users use Orange Business Services’ Business Everywhere solution, with Orange telepresence available in 104 countries.

“Providing connectivity is at the base of what we do,” Badrinath states. “We work in various domains, for example communications and collaboration, and we offer communications-enabled vertical applications in industries such as transport, healthcare, and finance.”

Badrinath explains that Orange Business Services has five priorities in place to achieve its Conquests 2015 targets and these are:

Social responsibility – being a caring and socially responsible organisation

Customer experience – ensure customers choose Orange for its outstanding customer experience

Focus on growth areas and bring new services to market effectively

Define and deploy the best regional strategies

Optimise performance

With respect to the deployment of regional strategies, in the Middle East Orange Business Services would like to participate in the development of “smart cities” and in tomorrow’s economy, while in Africa, the company is aiming at continuing to invest in the region to support growth throughout the continent.

“The aim is to generate €1 billion in emerging markets by 2015,” Badrinath reveals, from a current base of several hundred million euros.

Orange Business Services has identified a number of growth areas, including very high broadband, video, Internet of things (machine-to-machine opportunities), cloud computing, mobility, customer relationship management, the workspace of the future, and security.

Looking to maximise on the cloud computing opportunity Orange Business Services recently announced the offer of five new services that span the cloud computing portfolio and fall under the solution categories of cloud-ready network, Infrastructure as a Service and Software as a Service:

• Cloud-ready network solution, Business VPN Galerie

Leveraging its cloud-ready network, Orange Business Services launched the world’s first hub linking VPN customers to the world of cloud computing services via trusted network gateways. This cloud-ready network solution benefits both enterprises and cloud services providers. Business VPN Galerie provides enterprises with increased access reliability to cloud services than what is possible over the Internet while addressing their primary concern of security.

• Infrastructure as a Service solutions

Orange Business Services enhanced its IaaS portfolio with new services in its Flexible Computing Services range and Backup as a Service. Customers have a choice between shared and fully dedicated solutions, addressing the various needs and types of enterprises.

• Software as a Service solutions
– Private Applications Store
– Desktop Virtualisation

Looking ahead, Orange Business Services has an ambition to become the leader in videoconference services by leveraging partnerships with the main vendors in order to simplify videoconferencing through a better end-user support, via any network and terminal.

“We are already the number one for videoconferencing in France and in the top three worldwide,” Badrinath points out. The company also has an ambition to become the enterprises reference partner by providing the level of geographical reach and reliability requested for M2M, and by proposing bespoke an industrialised solutions. Orange Business Services is looking to sell 10 million SIMs in the M2M space as part of its Conquests 2015 target.

The desire to want to help companies to integrate mobility within their IT in order to leverage further the advantages of mobile usages while controlling centrally critical issues such as cost and security is another stated focus area for Orange Business Services.