Infrastructure limitations muzzle alliances – Orange Business Services – Regional

By Abigail Wilkinson | Business News Americas | Thursday, December 9, 2010
French enterprise communication solutions company Orange Business Services cannot be choosy about partners in Latin America because of limited connectivity infrastructure in the region, according to the company’s CEO Vivek Badrinath.
“In Latin America in general, we need to go to anyone who has infrastructure, or who plans to roll it out,” the executive said in response to a question from BNamericas, adding that B2B companies rarely have the ability to get involved in rollout projects.
Badrinath gave the example of China, where Orange has partnerships with both China Telecom and China Unicom to take advantage of their geographically distinct networks.
STRATEGY
Orange intends to encourage multinationals to take advantage of the economic recovery in Latin America to boost operations as the main spearhead of its growth strategy in the region.
The company is also pushing state-of-the-art ICT technologies for emerging multinational corporations and promoting new business models, including smart cities, e-government, health, education and security to achieve this growth.
Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Colombia are key countries for growth within the region.
“The mantra is 1bn euros [US$1.32bn] in emerging markets,” Badrinath said, referring to the company’s so-called Jaguar plan for emerging markets, which projects that revenue figure for 2015.
PRESENCE
Orange already has around 400 customers in Latin America, served by more than 600 employees in 15 countries, the company’s Latin America VP Mauro Cruzeiro said.
The company’s network in the region consists of 122 POPs in 31 countries.
The network is connected to the US through backbone on both the east and west coasts, providing a diversion system to prevent down time in case of events such as Chile’s February 27 earthquake, Cruzeiro told BNamericas.
Orange is examining the possibility of entering Brazil through an MVNO agreement, he added.
According to the Latin America executive, customers in the region prioritize security, business continuity and disaster recovery, IT architecture upgrades, communication in remote locations and expansion of collaboration capabilities.
Article via Business News America