Orange Business Services Announces Multi-Million-Dollar Contract Renewal in Middle East

Orange Business Services has announced a three-year, multi-million-dollar contract renewal to provide managed services to MAF-Carrefour Hypermarkets. The company, which is involved in the Middle East retail sector, has been an Orange customer for five years for network infrastructure and ICT services.

The expanded contract will have Orange providing a variety of new managed and cloud-based services through its own cloud VPN. The company will also manage domestic WANs in some countries for MAF-Carrefour, including the UAE.

Orange’s operations in the Middle East and Africa are focused on the B2B sector and support more than 500 multinational clients. Cloud services in general in that region are growing exponentially, with Gartner forecasting revenues will reach $462.3 million this year. That represents a 24.5 percent increase from last year, with business process services comprising the bulk of the overall market. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) are also undergoing significant growth in the region.

"Worldwide, spending on cloud services will grow 17.7 percent through 2016,” said Ed Anderson, research director at Gartner. “In the Middle East and North Africa region, growth is expected to be even higher, around 20.2 percent. Although there are some variations between cloud services segments, overall the outlook is very positive."

According to Ahmad Baghat, network and telecom manager for MAF-Carrefour, the company’s long-time relationship with Orange was a major factor in the decision to extend their contract and gain additional managed services. The move will free up MAF-Carrefour to focus more on their core business initiatives.

"We have outsourced some important elements of our network and IT services,” said Baghat. “One of the ways that Orange works with us as a partner is through customized in-house Orange service desks at MAF-Carrefour offices, which gives us the ability to deliver evolving and flexible services to our internal customers."