Orange Business Services Accelerates Growth Strategy in Asia Pacific

Orange Business Services is accelerating its growth strategy in Asia Pacific by focusing on key areas such as network enhancements, cloud computing, strategic partnerships and network-related IT services. More than 800 enterprise customers in the region are already benefiting from the Group's international network backbone and related IT infrastructure investments of around €750 million in 2011.

As part of Orange’s global strategy Conquests 2015, Orange Business Services aims to generate €1 billion in revenues in emerging countries in 2015. To meet this challenge in Asia Pacific, Orange is adding customer-facing personnel to focus on opportunities, particularly in China, India and Asean. In 2011 alone, close to 200 new employees have strengthened Orange’s customer-facing functions particularly in sales and customer support roles in the last six months. Total number of Orange employees is 3,000 people in 36 countries, focusing on targeted services such as very high broadband, unified communications, contact center solutions, video services, security and mobile device management.

"Today, Orange Business Services offers a strong presence in Asia Pacific in terms of people, solutions and customer experience supported by industry-leading^[1][2] network coverage,” said Vivek Badrinath, chief executive officer, Orange Business Services. "We provide end-to-end support both to multinationals expanding within the region and to the successful corporations who have begun to expand significantly out of the APAC territories. We look forward to continuing to implement our ambitious emerging markets strategy by launching new projects that will benefit our customers while keeping us at the forefront of the industry.”

Orange Business Services along with SITA, the air transport industry IT specialist, are building a global, high performance, managed cloud computing infrastructure. Data centers in Atlanta, Frankfurt and Singapore will be fully operational in Q1 2012 and Hong Kong, Sydney and Johannesburg in Q3 2012. These Tier III+ and Tier IV data centers will be interconnected via Orange’s high-speed MPLS network and will enable Orange Business Services to unlock cloud computing potential on a global scale, and to offer infrastructure as-a-service and desktop as-a-service to its APAC customers.

During 2012, Orange Business Services will complete the implementation of a 10G ring network between Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore providing customer benefits such as classes of service, dynamic bandwidth reallocation, improved SLAs, VPLS and 1G access. Upon completion of this project, Orange will have its Asia Pacific, Europe and U.S. dual 10G belts interconnected.

To support its services growth, Orange has invested in a new Solution Center in Singapore that gives customers in key industries – banking and finance, oil and gas, logistics and transportation, pharmaceutical and technology – the opportunity to experience demonstrations of solutions that address specific business challenges. A Beijing Solution Center will be launched in early 2012.

Customers benefit from strategic partnerships such as the one announced recently between Orange and China Telecom, which makes the most of the complementary aspects of their APAC networks – both submarine and terrestrial – and improves customer support in China. In the same way, Orange Business Services and NTT Communications cooperate on network infrastructure (sites, capacity sourcing, transmission infrastructure sharing) and data centers in APAC.

About Orange Business Services in Asia Pacific

Orange Business Services has the largest in-country capillarity comprising 157 PoPs in 101 cities in 40 countries and territories with dual backbone centers in key cities. The company’s international IP VPN reaches 24 countries in Asia Pacific with 133 PoPs in 53 cities. Orange customers benefit from the company’s fully resilient network infrastructure within Asia and to/from Europe, Russia, the U.S. and Latin America, Middle East and Africa. Orange operates 16 sales offices in Asia Pacific and has its headquarters in Singapore. It employs close to 3,000 business and technology professionals. Orange has three of its 15 global R&D Labs located in Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo.

About Orange Business Services

Orange Business Services, the France Telecom-Orange branch dedicated to B2B services, is a leading global integrator of communications solutions for multinational corporations. With the world's largest, seamless network for voice and data, Orange Business Services reaches 220 countries and territories with local support in 166. Offering a comprehensive package of communication services covering cloud computing, enterprise mobility, M2M, security, unified communications, videoconferencing, and broadband, Orange Business Services delivers a best-in-class customer experience across a global landscape. Thousands of enterprise customers and 1.4 million mobile data users rely on an Orange Business Services international platform for communicating and conducting business. Orange Business Services is a four-time winner of Best Global Operator at the World Communication Awards. Learn more at www.orange-business.com

France Telecom-Orange is one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators with 170,000 employees worldwide and sales of 33.8 billion euros in the first nine months of 2011. Orange is the Group's single brand for Internet, television and mobile services in the majority of countries where the company operates. France Telecom (NYSE:FTE) is listed on Euronext Paris (compartment A) and on the New York Stock Exchange.

Orange and any other Orange product or service names included in this material are trade marks of Orange Brand Services Limited, Orange France or France Telecom.

¹ Comparative Market Analysis, Gartner – Feb. 2011

² IDC MarketScape: Asia/Pacific Next Generation Telecom Services 2011 Vendor Analysis – Sept. 2011 (Doc# AP3053306T)