Bernt Ostergaard Current Analysis Research Director, IT Services

As we approach the end of the first decade in the 21st century we have a unique opportunity to look back at a tumultuous period that swept IP into every corner of our communications universe and expanded our notion of Connectivity. Massive increases in mobile subscribers rising from 15% to 70% of the world’s population, accompanied by a massive shift towards ubiquitous broadband availability has changed the global outlook, and shifted attention to emerging markets in a big way.

The rise of on-line communities has also given new meaning to ‘globalization’ with the world’s Facebook population surpassing 500 million and growing faster than India’s population. It forces enterprise IT departments to incorporate social media on their platforms, to validate their application in a cloud perspective, and to integrate the new mobile consumer devices into their enterprise networks without compromising security and business continuity. These challenges present major new market opportunities for telcos and IT service providers with global infrastructures, services and the consulting and support capabilities to operate them.

Uniquely, among the global telcos, Orange Business Services has laid out long-term commercial objectives under the conquests 2015 banner, aiming to motivate and engage the carrier employees; invest in the core network assets; win trust and new customers through high service quality and innovation; and expand its international presence. The strategy includes 2015 revenue targets of 1 billion EUROs in emerging markets and 500 million EUROs in cloud computing. To do this requires:

• Conquests in Customer Satisfaction. As analysts we usually see numbers and some statistics relating to customer satisfaction. But we gain little insight into what actually goes on behind the curtain. Orange Business Services lifted that curtain for us at the Cairo Major Service Center, and we were impressed with what we saw. Observing a center in operation puts a lot more perspective on the delivery of managed services. The Cairo support facility provides the required secure and scalable connectivity to the global telecoms network with massive redundancy and automated operations fail-over and back-up solutions for all operations to other support sites in the event of a disruption. Clearly global end-to-end customer support is a work in progress, with a common ITIL-base methodology for integration services and voice services still on-going, but Current Analysis will use the Orange Business Services Cairo MSC as the benchmark for more ‘behind-the-curtain’ customer satisfaction studies in 2011.
  
  
• Conquests in Emerging Markets. In our studies of emerging markets we have recently noted the strong Orange Business Services presence in Latin America (see Orange Business Services Has Comprehensive Latin American Network and Powerful Local Presence, December 10, 2010) with a pervasive presence of people and networks throughout the region, combining consulting with network services. We conclude that the company has shown that it can deliver its professional services across the region without having to rely on expertise in other parts of the world that may not be readily available for a project. Current Analysis also noted the Orange Business Services plans to open a new Technocentre in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire to develop and launch new products in multimedia services for mobile networks and Web-based services. As in other parts of the world, demand for mobility services in Africa continues to increase rapidly, and Orange is in a good position to drive traffic onto its global network as inter-continental traffic grows correspondingly.
  
  
• Conquests in cloud, mobility, M2M, telepresence, security and workspace management services. These are all essential growth areas to replace declining traditional transport revenues and Current Analysis has analyzed the Orange Business Services presence in all these markets. In a recent review of the RAS capabilities of major suppliers (see Remote Access Services Round-Up 2010: Who Leads the Pack?, October 7, 2010) we identified Orange Business Services as the leader of the pack, and very threatening to its major competitors. In our research around cloud services, we are also finding a tight linkage with mobility services, especially when it has to do with the management of devices, applications and security policy. On the topic of security and governance we have also conducted several studies of managed security in global telcos and IT Service provider companies (alongside Orange Business Services). We found Orange Business Services to have a strong competitive position, especially around global support and security expertise to give it a well-rounded offer.

Finally, this year we have seen a much tighter linkage between IT and business process and the need for businesses to transform their data centers and adopt cloud elements to stay competitive in the tough economic climate. Customers are not only looking for different price models and flexible commercial terms, we are also seeing a greater demand for prices linked to ‘transactions’ and ‘business outcomes.’ These factors will be important for differentiation (few competitors have this capability) and the ability to address these requirements will also improve profitability on SI deals. It’s been an exciting first decade in the new century, and we look forward to our continued partnership with Orange Business Services in the coming decade.