Orange Business Services Enhances Cloud Portfolio

Europe-based Orange Business Services has added a slew of new cloud services to its portfolio as part of a push to reach its goal of 500 million Euros in cloud-generated revenue by 2015. Included in the new wave of services are cloud backup, flexible cloud infrastructure, and a business VPN securely linking customers with cloud services. And, of course, Orange’s cloud service provider customers benefit too.

From Orange’s press release, here are some details on the new services:

• Business VPN Galerie – Orange Business Services describes it as “the world’s first hub linking VPN customers to the world of cloud computing services via trusted network gateways.” It’s a way for cloud service providers to deliver applications to customers under a SaaS model.
• Flexible Computing Premium – A choose-your-own-modules customizable cloud infrastructure offering enabling enterprises to pick from four service management levels complimented by up to 99.9% SLAs. It sounds very similar to the Flexible 4 Business offering Orange unveiled in September 2010, at least on paper.
• Backup as a Service – EMC Avamar powers this cloud backup solution, which also includes professional services for design, implementation, and management. Security and performance can be adjusted per the importance of the data.
• Private Applications Store – A catalog of pay-per-use cloud applications that can be deployed and used by enterprises in a click.
• Desktop Virtualization – Simply put, it’s the ability to deliver the end-user desktop environment as a service, eliminating the hassle of managing remote, distributed machines.

For smaller solutions providers across Europe, the Orange Business Services moves reinforce the fact that big services providers intend to be complete cloud solutions providers. The same could be true in the U.S., where Microsoft, Cisco and other big IT players are working closely with massive service providers on cloud strategies.

In particular, TalkinCloud is closely watching how Microsoft ultimately promotes Office 365 (the forthcoming successor to Business Productivity Online Suite) to large service providers. Office 365 is slated for launch sometime in 2011.

Additional reporting by Joe Panettieri. Follow Talkin’ Cloud via RSS, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for Talkin’ Cloud’s Weekly Newsletter, Webcasts and Resource Center. Read our editorial disclosures here.