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Published originally on the blog: http://blogs.orange-business.com/live/2011/11/the-cloud-journey-you-are-here.html

 

from left to right

Minter Dial - Fadhila Brahimi - Hervé Kabla - James Moffat - Anthony Plewes - Glenn le Santo - Laura Andrew - Yann Gourvennec - Andrew Gerrard - Kate Bourdet - Alexandra Operto - Joel Aouizerate

Picture taken by Benjamin Ellis

A.Operto

2011 was a busy year for business continuity in Orange with flooding in Australia, civil unrest in Egypt and an earthquake and tsunami in Japan amongst other disasters. The revolution in Egypt was particularly pertinent for Orange Business Services, because it is the home to one of its three global service centers. To explain how Orange coped during this crisis, head of operations Paul Joyce and the team that handled the situation spoke to customers at Orange Business Live! 2011.

The unrest started on the 25^th January and by 28^th January the management team put the business continuity plan (BCP) into action, the head of Cairo operations told the conference. The crisis had escalated rapidly with Internet and mobile networks taken off the air and a declaration of a curfew.

“There is no catalog for crisis management but you must be able to deal with all eventualities,” he said. “You need to be strong whatever is happening and work together as a team.” The BCP ensured continuity of support and all service requests were automatically routed to other sites. In addition the plan also made provision for the safety of its employees and security of the premise and site. This was particularly vital in Egypt during the crisis when there was a lack of security in the country.

An operations director in London helped coordinate the BCP. He told the event that the crisis management plan provides the basic framework and identifies the key areas of the business which can be impacted. “We can’t anticipate political events – we prepare for these types of situations – what was unique was the duration and the unpredictability,” he said. “You might not be able to anticipate the risk – but you can anticipate the impact to the business.”

The curfew made it immediately difficult for the staff at the center and some needed to leave to be able to get home to their families. Others preferred to stay onsite “Our VPN was working so we had connectivity. The BCP was telling us what to do – we liaised with the other teams to make sure smooth business transfer,” said the Cairo operations director.

Most of the work was transferred to Delhi global service centre and customers suffered from no downtime at all. “It is relatively easy to transfer work because they use the same tools,” explained the Delhi operations director. “A ticket opened in one centre can be dealt with in another, for example. The biggest challenge we had was to mobilize people because our workload was basically doubled. We needed to fly people in from other locations.” The plan also allowed for a lengthy program as Orange anticipated that the crisis could prolong and it needed – and received – the commitment from staff.

Keeping care of the staff was essential. In Egypt there were no communications and no money because the banks were all closed. “We had to look after all the people on site, providing food, water and sleeping bags – and repatriate non Egyptians.” In Delhi staff were given local accommodation, transport, refreshments and all customer facing work was prioritized.

People were obviously key in the successful implementation of the business continuity plan. In Egypt they obviously had national pride at stake, but across the entire organization, the staff put their customers’ needs to the fore.

The team involved in the BCP also shared their lessons learned about the experience. These included:

• Use global processes and a global model to simplify and standardize operations everywhere
• Harness the power of your people
• Know the critical areas of your business
• Planning is very important and anticipate the impact to the business
• Have very clear roles in the BCP and once the crisis has hit you need to trust people and delegate
• Communicate what you are doing to customers and staff
• Never underestimate the value of training

Speaking at Orange Business Live 2011, Ernie Park, vice president and CIO of 3M, explained how his company is executing on its Vision 2020 for IT transformation. 3M, initially founded as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, has 55,000 products, operates in 65 coutnries and sells its products in more than 200 countries. With 80,000 employees and sales of US$27 billion, the company operates 45 technology platforms and seeks to combine the expertise within these to create unique products.

Park explained that 3M identified three options. The first was to maintain its legacy systems. “There’s no option to that because the people that built them have mostly retired,” he said. The second option was build their own solution, new custom-developed system but that was perceived to be too risky. The third option, which 3M is pursuing, is to buy an ERP package and place that at the foundation of its new IT systems and processes.

“It has to be evolving, incremental and low risk,” said Park. “The reason why we came up with these principles is we have seen many failures in large companies when they try to implement global transformation. We’ve come to this late so we can take the lessons of other companies.”

Park detailed his future state vision of 3M’s architecture. The foundation is common master data, then ERP, then collaborative commerce and an integrated global supply chain to move manufacturing capabilities closer to customers, he said. Those are capped off with predictive analytics to create real-time actionable insights.

Park said it is necessary to effect transformation now because of the rapid transformation of the business world in general. “If you look at the landscape around us we are operating in a very rapidly changing environment,” he said. “China and India will become the first and third economies over the next 15 to 20 years. It is happening right now. I see a lot of Chinese people travelling now and many years ago it was Japanese people, when their economy was booming. 3M is generating most of its growth in China, Brazil, India, Russia, the Middle East and Africa. 3M is changing as well because of the need to service our customers differently. Our employees need to understand the need for different skill sets as many of our IT activities have become commodities.”

“We have to realign our strategy around need for growth, excellence, innovation, customer intimacy and globalisation,” added Park. “The IT enablers for this are Web 2.0, an integrated ERP foundation, virtualisation, telepresence and mobility, predictive analysis and cloud computing.”

Park said a four-stage methodology is necessary:

1.Assessment

2.Rationalisation

3.Modernisation

4.Empowerment

 

 

“We are between phases two and three,” he said. “In terms of IT cost reductions, we’ve achieved $100m of annual spending reduction by organisational restructuring and supplier and contract management – we’ve consolidate our communications contracts from 650 down to 250.”

Those approaches form the basis of 3M Vision 2020, which will see a global platform ready for the demands of Generation Y customers and to accommodate the high growth economies of the newly emerged markets.

 

By George Malim

Stéphane Richard CEO and Chaiman of France Telecom-Orange was presenting live at Orange Business Live today and he described 3 major trends that are shaping the world and the future for telecom operators in the future:

1. globalisation: we are living in a more and more interconnected and globalised world, in which emerging countries are playing a growing role and in which growth is stagnating in the developed world. This is forcing the West, Richard added, to focus on innovation and expanding into new markets while at the same time protecting home markets. This implies developing speed and adaptation. 

2. consumerisation: business users are behaving more and more like consumers. 60% of people buying personal mobiles are using them for professional needs he said. The challenge is for businesses to provide more service while reinforcing security. 

3. mass communication is at the heart of a new digital revolution as social media is expanding. Data traffic in mobile networks is rocketing up. In Paris for instance, it increases by 5% every week. This is imposing a challenge on the upgrade of the network to all telecom operators.

Stéphane Richard went on saying that What Orange is committed in doing for its clients in terms of globalisation is to support them throughout a highly inter-connected world through its international infrastructure : over 4,000 km of water cables, a fleet of 4 boats to deploy submarine cables, and serving over 3,500 large business customers worldwide. in 2010, Orange launched its new 5 year strategic plan (Conquests 2015) and Orange is investing between 12-15% of its revenue every year, mostly to provide more capacity and backbone routes as per the requirement of its clients. In the B2C lines of business, Orange is now working towards the growth of its customer base significantly.The Orange brand is one of the top 10 telecom brand in the world, he pointed out, and this is an asset that Orange will be building upon. over 20,000 people are working in the business division of Orange, in order to support its business clients he said.

As far as the consumerisation of IT is concerned, Stéphane Richard said that we are uniquely placed so as to understand this trend because the company is dealing with both B2C and B2B trends. Orange sees this consumerisation trend as an opportunity and not a threat, and a driver in order to increase employee retention and to attract more younger employees. As an example, Richard mentioned the launch of Orange's own internal social network, called Orange Plazza, which now has more than 22,000 users and hosts thousands of communities.

Stéphane Richard is convinced that "the future of telecommunications will be made of coopetition" with device manufacturers, content providers, the Press, service providers etc. Stéphane Richard's latest visit to Silicon Valley convinced him that "[Orange] is regarded as one of the most curious and open telco in the world" by the main players of the Valley. Richard insisted on the fact that networks are of the utmost importance for business to be carried out and that what telcos are doing through their quality of service is making things possible for the world to do business.

the B2B2C concept is a very important area of growth in the future he added. Stéphane Richard mentioned the work that the Telco is doing regarding "smart cities" as a major example of that approach. Orange has set up a partnership with Veolia (for Water metering) and is also working on very big projects in the Middle East and namely Saudi Arabia. Besides, mobile payment will be unavoidable in the future he added, naming the experience that the Telco has amassed with Orange Money, its mobile payment system in emerging countries, and he said he is convinced that Orange has the skills and track record and link with customers (namely billing) making things possible for the telecoms operator to become a leader in those areas, not to mention the Orange global footprint. As far as Cloud Computing is concerned, he added that because Orange controls its network, it is in a better position to provide end-to-end quality of service in the cloud. 

Stéphane Richard concluded his pitch by thanking Orange Business Services customers for their custom and re-emphasising that B2B is one of the most important part of the group's business.

 

  Three key trends are currently dominating corporate IT, said Vivek Badrinath, chief executive of Orange Business Services .

It’s been a year of uncertainty: civil unrest and revolution in the Middle East and North Africa, floods, earthquakes and bombs in Asia. Consequently its vital to plan for the worst: it might not just be your communications that is impacted, it can be your supply chain too.

Another key trend has been the growing importance of emerging market opportunities. This is not just an opportunity for Western brands entering new markets, but rapidly growing corporates from the BRICS can now themselves break out into new (mature) markets.

And the workplace is changing: From tech-savvy millennials joining the workforce to the unstoppable rise of consumerisation, everyone including Orange, must embrace new working methods. Badrinath commented that you can no more stop an employee using Facebook at 11am (at work) than you can stop them checking their work emails at 1am on their corporate Blackberries. Work/life has completely blurred.

The impact this has on IT is that it has become C-level again. IT is strategic and a threat.

Badrinath also talked briefly about Orange Business Services’ performance and strategy. EUR 7.2 billion in revenues in 2010 has delivered a health profit (but not so healthy as to alienate the customers present in the auditorium.) Orange  is no 1 in Telemark Data VPN Crystal Ball for the 5^th year running and a leader in various Gartner quadrants.

The strategy for 2015 is to keep it simple and customer focused.

·         Orange is investing in its network expanding capacity and coverage, and improving resilience to cope with unexpected events (such as 30% bandwidth increase in Africa and expanding Ethernet footprint to 70 countries).

·         Orange is also focusing on emerging markets. For instance, it has been working on smart cities in the Middle East, telepresence rooms and M2M in Africa, helping deploy domestic networks for French banks in Russia, support MNCs with their IT operations in India and connecting shops and offices in China.

·         Expanding connected IT services is another key focus. Examples include cloud computing, unified communications as a service, applications for selected vertical markets and partnering with specialists for B2B2C offers.

·         Orange has now installed more than 400 telepresence rooms. Customers with Orange telepresence can interconnect with telepresence on Tata and Telefonica networks. Also, working towards allowing all end points – tablets to immersive – to interwork

·         Orange has created a new “Global Mobility Services” group,  with 50 people dedicated to MNCs.

 

 

 

I offer a coffee if you (dear visitor) guess where this photo was taken.

Fadhila Brahimi and Minter Dial were missing, they were included in another picture (to be published soon)

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