The two companies have signed a memorandum of understanding on the project, which will have a revenue-sharing investment model.
According to Thierry Bonhomme, head of Orange Business Services (OBS) and a deputy CEO of Orange group, the venture will start working in Singapore “in coming weeks”.
Speaking to Capacity at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona today, Bonhomme said that OBS will operate the service on behalf of customers, from the company’s local office and with a Singapore data centre. “We have a strong presence in Asia, with our headquarters in Singapore,” he added.
OBS said that the new cloud services will roll out across western Europe as well as south-east Asia in April, followed by the US in October. The Middle East and Africa are scheduled for 2018.
The global public cloud offering will include advice, auditing, integration and managed services for cloud infrastructure and applications. They complement the existing Orange private cloud portfolio and will help enterprises in their digital transformation initiatives.
The main aim of the cloud strategy is to help multinational corporations migrate their legacy enterprise applications to the cloud, said OBS, and ensure that their infrastructure and applications are available in all geographic regions in which they need to be hosted.
The public cloud service is based on OpenStack technology, an open-source software platform for cloud computing.
The service is being run by Philippe Laplane, director of Orange Cloud for Business, part of OBS. Laplane said: “Our customers have a genuine need for an international public cloud offering that will allow them to adapt to the uses imposed by new technologies and meet the challenges of transforming their IT services on a global scale.”
