In today’s business environment, organisations must quickly adapt to change and provide increasing value to customers to stay one step ahead of the competition.

To fuel this level of business agility, an organisation requires the right IT infrastructure. Understanding this, Orange Business Services put cloud computing at the heart of its strategy to become a leading global cloud services provider with Flexible Computing, its flagship infrastructure as a service offering built on NetApp.

Orange Business Services, the business services arm of global telecommunications leader Orange, developed its Flexible Computing solution with NetApp Data ONTAP at its core.

With Flexible Computing, Orange Business Services has established itself as a leading IT infrastructure provider, offering customers a cloud infrastructure on which they can innovate, transform their own IT organisations, and create a competitive advantage. Today, Flexible Computing has 600 customers globally.

“In 2010, Orange Business Services was at a crossroad, and we needed to innovate and develop new growth areas and business offerings to become more competitive and increase profit. Cloud computing has been at the heart of this strategy, and developing the right partnerships to design the right offers have been instrumental,” says Thierry Bonhomme, CEO of Orange Business Services.

“During the Flexible Computing design process, NetApp proved it could deliver the scalability, non-disruptive operations, efficiency, and security we required to deliver on-demand cloud services. Our Flexible Computing services enabled us to accelerate our growth and solidify our cloud provider credentials.

“NetApp is a strategic partner of Orange Business Services and will play an integral role in helping to grow our global cloud services business.”

With over 35Pb of storage capacity on NetApp, Orange Business Services’ customers benefit from the combined assets of Orange and NetApp to manage their infrastructures in the cloud.

Key highlights include:
* Non-disruptive operations – NetApp technology enables Orange Business Services to provide customers with superior availability and offer a range of SLAs to meet any customer budget, both critical elements of a successful cloud services offering.
* Seamless scalability – Orange Business Services’ customers can shrink or expand storage capacity on their own. An action that used to take up to several hours now happens in a matter of seconds, saving both the customer and Orange Business Services valuable time and resources.
* Proven efficiency – with NetApp Flash Cache intelligent caching, Orange Business Services has experienced tremendous power, cooling, and rack space savings by using low-cost, high-capacity SATA drives while cutting latency by a factor of 10.
* Security – Orange Business Services leverages NetApp MultiStore technology to create a multi-tenant environment that maintains customer data privacy and offers enterprise levels of security.
* Simplified data management – Orange Business Services did not have to invest in a large team of storage administrators when it launched Flexible Computing because much of the provisioning process was automated with NetApp OnCommand Unified Manager management software.

As Orange Business Services adds more capacity, it can simply apply the policies with a few clicks to help keep costs down as the business grows.

Get an in-depth look at how Orange Business Services built flexible computing offers.

“Orange Business Services set out to transform its business by unveiling a global cloud services strategy that radically changed how it served and interacted with customers. The success they have seen to date with this innovative new business model is a perfect example of how the right storage foundation can serve as a driving force in a successful cloud deployment,” says Manfred Reitner, senior VP and GM EMEA, NetApp.

“Our ongoing relationship with Orange Business Services is further proof of how NetApp enables customers to confidently manage and maintain control of their data across any cloud, accelerating innovation and IT responsiveness.”