Mahadevan commented that, India as a business destination was not new to Orange Business Services (OBS). “The company has been doing business here for the last 50 years in another avatar called SITA. At that time, it used to be the air transport industry IT specialist,” he said.
Orange, has been the third party auditor for the SWAN projects in Haryana and Chattisgarh. The company has also worked on irrigation projects in UP and for Stock Holding Corporation India.
“Recently, we heard about dial 108 for emergency medical help. Orange has implemented and worked on this project in a few states. In fact, we just commissioned a similar project for the kingdom of Bhutan, which had its own challenges in terms of terrain etc,” Mahadevan informed.
Orange is also engaged in projects related to banks as well as India’s defense forces. “We do a lot of work for the defense establishment including Assam Rifles, 2 Signals, Southern command etc.,” he said.
“In India, we focus on two things. Firstly, we continue to connect the world to India and India to the world. For example, State Bank of India’s overseas branches are connected by us. Similarly, if you look at Coca Cola, their Indian operations are connected to their global headquarters through our network,” he explained.
The network has become a commodity. It is no longer solely about scalability, resilience etc. “Today, it is not just about the features of a network but what rides on it and how the service is delivered to the end user. That’s of utmost importance, today,” he added.
Orange operates in the areas of unified communication & collaboration encompassing all aspects of telephony, contact center solutions, video-conferencing, etc. “We work with almost everybody under the sun, including the likes of Cisco and Avaya, but not as a reseller. We are an implementer,” said Saurabh Sanghoee, Head of Global Services, India OBS.
Sanghoee said that the majority of the company’s business came from IT companies and BPOs where they were able to provide end-to-end services. OBS collects and aggregates calls from around the country or around the world, and then routes the same.
Orange also provides services for data centers. The company recently set up a data center for Himachal Pradesh Corporation Ltd and built a DR site for it in Chennai. “Besides building data centers, we also help manage them,” said Mahadevan.