GDF SUEZ and Orange Business Services sign a six-year information system management deal

GDF SUEZ, a French energy group and the world’s second-largest energy company¹, has signed a six-year deal with Orange Business Services for the management of its information system. The partnership not only includes standard facilities management such as hosting, infrastructure operation and running ERP applications, but also covers setting up a shared engineering team in charge of developing the Group’s solutions to match the needs of its business units as closely as possible.

• a catalog of unified services

Based on the France Telecom-Orange Group facilities management capacity and the increased standardization of technology, the Information System Department at GDF SUEZ will offer the Group’s entities in France a unified catalog of operating services that will help transform the Group and allow it to provide a shared internal services platform.

• tailor-made governance

Orange Business Services and GDF SUEZ will set up a common engineering team with an innovative form of governance, ensuring that GDF SUEZ is systematically involved in the decision-making process for basic technical and operational choices. Access to France Telecom-Orange’s innovative capacity will allow technological breakthroughs to be better anticipated and will make it possible to continually enhance GDF SUEZ’s catalog of information system services. The two engineering teams will work together, in particular on private cloud computing solutions.

• long-term and secure information system hosting

Additionally, Orange Business Services will provide the necessary hosting for GDF SUEZ and its development via a new green data center currently being built in Normandy. The new site meets the Group’s two objectives in the fields of sustainable development and energy savings, in part due to its innovative ventilation system, known as "free cooling”, developed by R&D teams at Orange.

"We are proud to have the GDF SUEZ Group as one of our key clients by supporting the transformation of its information system,” says Vivek Badrinath, CEO of Orange Business Services. "This deal is proof of our willingness to tackle issues facing major international groups in IT services at a time when telecom and IT services are becoming increasingly converged. Our ability to successfully meet these transformation needs is what makes us a legitimate IT infrastructure operator."

"The partnership with Orange Business Services to manage our information system is a major factor in the transformation of our Group,” explains Véronique Durand-Charlot, Director of Information Systems at the GDF SUEZ Group. "The reinforced proximity between our two teams will help us to find new sources of synergy, and tackle current and future technological challenges for the benefit of our Business Units, by giving them the competitive tools they need to reach their objectives,” she added.

About Orange Business Services

Orange Business Services, the France Telecom-Orange branch dedicated to B2B services, is a leading global integrator of communications solutions for multinational corporations. With the world's largest, seamless network for voice and data, Orange Business Services reaches 220 countries and territories with local support in 166. Offering a comprehensive package of communication services covering cloud computing, enterprise mobility, M2M, security, unified communications, videoconferencing, and broadband, Orange Business Services delivers a best-in-class customer experience across a global landscape. Thousands of enterprise customers and 1.4 million mobile data users rely on an Orange Business Services international platform for communicating and conducting business. Orange Business Services is a four-time winner of Best Global Operator at the World Communication Awards. Learn more at www.orange-business.com.

France Telecom-Orange is one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators with 169,000 employees worldwide, and sales of 45.5 billion euros in 2010. Orange is the Group's single brand for Internet, television and mobile services in the majority of countries where the company operates. France Telecom (NYSE:FTE) is listed on Euronext Paris (compartment A) and on the New York Stock Exchange.

Orange and any other Orange product or service names included in this material are trade marks of Orange Brand Services Limited, Orange France or France Telecom.

¹ Source: Global 500, 2010 - annual ranking of the world’s biggest companies