• Orange to bring gen AI closer to operations and customers with Google Cloud
• New deployments aim to expand opportunities in countries and industries where local cloud environments are required
• Google Cloud to support Orange in its open and value-driven approach to AI

ISSY-LES-MOULINEAUX, France, April 9, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Cloud Next '24, LAS VEGAS -- Google Cloud and Orange today announced they have expanded their collaboration to deploy artificial intelligence, including gen AI, closer to Orange's and its customers' operations. Through the use of Google Distributed Cloud, Orange can meet local requirements for cloud environments, accelerate AI adoption and benefits for customers, and foster an open and value-driven approach.

Google Distributed Cloud (GDC) is a fully managed hardware and software solution that brings the power of Google's AI services to the Edge, air-gapped environments, and Cross-Cloud. Designed with AI and data-intensive workloads in mind, GDC will enable Orange to take a pivotal step towards accelerating AI adoption into its operations across the 26 countries it serves. The company is focusing on three areas with AI:

• Smarter Networks: With GDC, Orange will get an environment to run sensitive network data and AI workloads that some country regulators may require to be local or on-premise. From capacity planning to root cause analysis,  Orange can benefit from significant improvements in network planning and design through the automation of reporting, classification, and analysis.
   
• Operational Efficiency: Orange will be able to run gen AI models on-premise in an environment that is very elegantly integrated into similar Vertex AI services on Google Cloud. Orange's operations and customer service teams will benefit from those AI models by getting the answers they need faster, while customers will experience a faster time-to-resolution and improved quality of service.
   
• Improved Customer Experience: Beyond the contact center, Orange has leveraged AI and Google Cloud technology to deliver personalized recommendations for relevant phones, plans, and services–improving customer lifetime value. GDC also allows gen AI-based speech recognition to occur in each Orange country, bringing these powerful AI technologies even to countries without a Google Cloud region.

"We have a mission to accelerate value creation for Orange with every job, every network, and every customer experience super-powered by responsible AI. Orange sees enormous value in AI across every dimension of our business," said Christel Heydemann, CEO of Orange Group. "This partnership with Google Cloud and the cutting-edge solutions announced today are foundational to Orange achieving AI at scale and is a major step towards unlocking significant value from all of our data."

To achieve its goals of bringing AI capabilities into each of the regions it serves, Orange required a secure solution to enhance cloud services at a local level, while still meeting local regulatory requirements around security and data residency. Google Cloud worked with Orange from the concept stage onwards to co-design its Google Distributed Cloud (GDC) deployment, which allows Orange to establish a local cloud that delivers heightened resilience, particularly in challenging environments, while optimizing performance and reducing latency for critical workloads.

This collaboration will bring the cloud to Orange's own data centers, protecting sensitive workloads that must stay on-premises and also enabling Orange to filter extremely high-volume data, such as over one petabyte a day of network telemetry. By bringing the cloud into the data center via GDC, Orange is enabling faster deployment of AI applications for local teams, and fostering agility and responsiveness. Moreover, this collaboration opens up avenues for new business opportunities, as it makes it possible for use cases to be delivered across many Orange countries.

"Businesses are increasingly bringing gen AI solutions to the edge of the network to ensure better agility, responsiveness, and resilience," said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. "Our partnership with Orange addresses that need, combining data, reliable infrastructure, and leading AI technologies to create new solutions to meet Orange's global needs"

Orange and Google Cloud have collaborated since 2020 to fuel Orange's digital transformation through data and AI. Over the last three years, Orange has migrated 13 petabytes of data to Google Cloud and has many strategic use cases in production across ten countries running on Google Cloud. The two companies' shared passion for innovation has resulted in a collaboration that has brought secure, customizable, best-in-class solutions to customers across geographies and industries.

About Google Cloud
Google Cloud is the new way to the cloud, providing AI, infrastructure, developer, data, security, and collaboration tools built for today and tomorrow. Google Cloud offers a powerful, fully integrated and optimized AI stack with its own planet-scale infrastructure, custom-built chips, generative AI models, and development platform, as well as AI-powered applications, to help organizations transform. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted technology partner.

About Orange
Orange is one of the world's leading telecommunications operators with revenues of 44.1 billion euros in 2023 and 137,000 employees worldwide at 31 December 2023, including 73,000 employees in France. The Group has a total customer base of 298 million customers worldwide at 31 December 2023, including 254 million mobile customers and 25 million fixed broadband customers. The Group is present in 26 countries. Orange is also a leading provider of global IT and telecommunication services to multinational companies under the brand Orange Business. In February 2023, the Group presented its strategic plan « Lead the Future », built on a new business model and guided by responsibility and efficiency. « Lead the Future » capitalizes on network excellence to reinforce Orange's leadership in service quality.

Orange is listed on Euronext Paris (symbol ORA) and on the New York Stock Exchange (symbol ORAN). For more information on the internet and on your mobile: www.orange.com, www.orange-business.com/, and the Orange News app or to follow us on Twitter: @orangegrouppr.

Orange and any other Orange product or service names included in this material are trademarks of Orange or Orange Brand Services Limited.

SOURCE Google Cloud