Orange powers digital trust via SASE and SD-WAN strategies

Digital environments are more complex and dynamic than ever. As traffic flows across many routes, maintaining consistent access becomes an increasingly challenging task.

IDC’s research confirms what we are seeing across our global customer base. Cloud-first strategies are driving network redesign, with SD-WAN continuing to gain momentum in enterprise environments. Security integration has become non-negotiable as the adoption of SASE frameworks accelerates, with organizations seeking unified policy enforcement. Additionally, the growing use of AI is generating new traffic patterns and emerging threats, necessitating flexible, high-performance and secure connectivity.  

SD-WAN and SASE address this by simplifying networks and delivering continuous performance and built-in security across all connections. Together, they enable reliable and secure access to applications, regardless of where users are connected or how network conditions fluctuate.

“While technology capabilities matter, conversations with customers reveal deeper priorities”, explains Emmanuelle Christophe. Transparency over ownership and understanding who controls the data plane, as well as how routing decisions are made, is key.

Furthermore, enterprises are seeking business outcome alignment over technical specifications, flexible models that are adaptable to operational maturity and trust requirements, as well as global consistency with local expertise and support that respects sovereignty concerns. They are also seeking future-proof architecture that evolves with the transformation journey and autonomous operations that ensure availability through direct management and supervision.

We take both mono-vendor and multi-vendor approaches, giving customers the flexibility to choose the approach that best fits their business requirements. In a mono-vendor model, customers buy architecture and a service rather than being locked into a specific product. In a multi-vendor model, we support several industry-leading SD-WAN vendors and integrate best-of-breed security. This is all wrapped up in our own orchestration, monitoring and operations layer to deliver a consistent experience regardless of choice.

Many SASE vendors begin with security and add the networking component later. We start with a global carrier-grade network and layer SD-WAN and SASE on top. By optimizing traffic across our private backbone customers enjoy a faster, more reliable, and more secure connectivity experience.

The Orange approach is built around four central pillars: a composable architecture, global expertise and local presence, security-driven innovation, and AI-enhanced operations.

A modular model lets customers select and chain network and security functions with flexible management options. With over 650 points of presence worldwide and operations in more than 200 countries, Orange delivers consistent service quality while addressing local regulatory and compliance requirements, a critical differentiator in today's complex geopolitical environment.

Orange integrates proprietary threat intelligence into all SASE deployments, augmenting industry-leading SSE capabilities from partners such as Netskope, Palo Alto, Zscaler, and Fortinet with our own security expertise.

We are also embedding AI across the service lifecycle to proactively predict issues, detect anomalies, and streamline operations with GenAI-powered assistance.                                                        

A European industrial manufacturer with extensive merger and acquisition activity needed to modernize its carve-in/carve-out infrastructure. Challenges included third-party management, creating business risks and a need for cloud migration and flexible support.

By deploying Evolution Platform, we created a flexible, secure infrastructure based on a shared responsibility model, where we provide the virtual network, edge, security and networking elements.

The consumption model has delivered clear benefits, including eliminating upfront infrastructure cost and unlimited scalability for acquisitions. Advanced cloud migration has reduced operating expenses, minimized data center dependency and strengthened security.

IDC has highlighted our Evolution Platform strategy for its ability to truly transform the way customers consume and manage SD-WAN, SASE, and other services from Orange. This innovative platform approach gives customers flexibility in choosing services.

Enterprises can consume networking, connectivity, security, and cloud services much like they consume cloud computing: self-service, API-driven, and flexible, yet underpinned by the advantage of carrier-level performance. Services can be self-managed, co-managed or fully managed.

“Evolution Platform enables modular, flexible, carrier-grade solution design - combining telco resilience with System Integrator-like customization options,” pinpoints IDC as a strength. All backed up by consulting and professional services to guide enterprises through their connectivity and SD-WAN journey.

The story does not stop here. Orange is continuously innovating, exploring the possibilities of technology you can trust. Over the next two years, we plan to utilize AIOps in new IT systems to further enhance automation, including automating SD-WAN deployments, AI-powered compliance checks, and applying generative AI tools and virtual assistants for both internal operations and customer interactions.

The Orange roadmap for SD-WAN and SASE is ever-evolving – it leads, advances, and redefines.

To read the IDC MarketScape reports in full: