The Edge Event: In your opinion, what role does Edge Computing play in digital transformation and wider cloud strategy?

Jehanne Savi: Edge Computing will play a key role in digital transformation of enterprises. It should be seen as a complementary solution in addition to traditional centralized cloud. Edge Computing is particularly relevant and suited for demanding use cases that require low latency or generate huge amounts of data compute and will therefore enable to perform data processing locally without huge transfers of data on the network.

EE: With this in mind, what does the new technology landscape really mean for enterprises?

JS: The current technological landscape is a real opportunity for enterprises to help them digitize their processes and increase their operational efficiency.

5G & edge computing benefits are mostly perceived by the market as linked to low latency & big data volume handling, especially due to video usage or even augmented reality. Managing 5G connectivity and edge computing together means being able to manage end-to-end quality for their usage.

In addition, we can also mention that these new technologies represent an opportunity for enterprises to mutualize resources and to size exactly their level of IT and energy consumption and even to optimize it compared to what is was with previous technologies, which echoes with the increasing ‘green’ expectations within the society.

In this context, companies are eager to test and learn before implementing these new technologies at a larger and more industrial scale. Within Orange, this is what we do through co-innovation projects with leading companies, for example in the transport and industry sector, to climb the learning curve and make sure we build adequate on demand managed services portfolio to maximize Orange value added provided to its customers.

EE: In your opinion, what are the technology priorities for enterprises?

JS: All enterprises are under pressure to conduct their digital transformation and pursue also cost optimization ; in parallel, CTIOs are adapting their network architecture to the cloud in the short term and by 2025 their internet data will be prevalent on the consumer data in our networks.

With digitalization of their processes, quality of service for connectivity services becomes all the more critical and multi-dimensional for companies as said by 2 out of 3.

As an example, we can quote industry 4.0 which is a good illustration of this expectation with so many use cases, each one demanding its own SLA (e.g. low latency, huge data management, adjusted security …). Enterprises have been sensitive very early to SDx offers and have been eager to leverage the embedded “on-demand promise” i.e. a flexible pay-per-use pricing model, a quick zero-touch delivery and a capability for automatic scaling or re-routing according to traffic needs or outages.

This demand for flexibility has appeared even more critical and obvious during the Covid-19 crisis. Moreover, it is an opportunity to make it happen together in a sustainable value chain.

EE: How have you seen the landscape of edge computing change in recent years?

JS: On the emerging business of Edge Computing, Telcos with their distributed architecture have an opportunity based on their secure and well connected real-estate asset and as Orange engaged in this transformation towards On Demand Networks & 5G we are also preparing this edge computing era.

Telcos are assessing the best way to succeed on this new market by considering complementary partnerships to position themselves in the value chain alongside with hyperscalers and to develop new business revenues.

Such partnerships to get the best of both parties, in terms of connectivity infrastructure and in terms of attractivity for the cloud developers ecosystem, are the major trend we have seen in the last few years.

EE: Why did you decide to participate in The Edge Event 2020? What are you most looking forward to?

JS: Since it is an emerging market, we need to continuously challenge our vision and convictions on Edge Computing by interlocking and discussing with customers and other stake holders . A forum like The Edge Event is therefore most valuable for us to meet and feel the trends within the ecosystem.