Orange Business Services was picked by Mars to build a network that will connect more than 125,000 Mars Associates across more than 80 countries. Orange Business Services is building an intelligent automated network (IAN) for Mars, which makes M&Ms, Snickers, Twix and other food items.
The IAN network will provide a secure, scalable platform to host Mars' business applications on while also supporting manufacturing operations, office locations and supplier interactions for the private, family owned business.
“The Orange network will provide four times our current network capacity at a lower cost, supporting new digital capabilities we’re using throughout our business," said Mars' Paul L’Estrange, chief technology officer, in a statement.
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Orange Business Services had has landed similar large-scale deals with Siemens and Sony Group. Orange Business Services is connecting more than 500 Sony locations in over 50 countries across five continents with its Orange Flexible SD-WAN solution, which launched last year using Cisco's Viptela SD-WAN technologies. In March, Orange Business Services announced it would deploy Flexible SD-WAN across 1,500 Siemens sites.
The Mars deal also includes Orange Business Services' Flexible SD-WAN offering as well as multi-sourcing services integration (MSI.) Orange Business Services' MSI streamlines global infrastructure management and delivers a single point of control for all other service providers.
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Orange Business Services has several key components in its MSI portfolio, including its experience managing contracts with more than 200 internet service providers across its global footprint in over 200 countries. Providing MSI services is a key revenue driver for Orange Business Services, as well as for competitors such as BT, AT&T, Verizon and system integrators.
With the increased complexity of offering more services and applications, enterprises, especially large multi-national enterprises, are turning to MSI providers. According to research by Gartner, 50% of large enterprises will require an MSI approach for their vendor management by 2022, up from 10% last year.
In addition to SD-WAN, Mars' next-generation network uses a range of managed services, including security, that are offered by Orange Business Services.
"We’re excited to serve as an innovation partner for Mars and help their associates identify even more data-driven solutions across a newly unified, intelligent network,” said Rob Willcock, president of the Americas, Orange Business Services, in a statement. “Orange has the proven design and integration skills, technology eco-system partners and people to serve as a long-term partner for Mars with our ‘global vision & local care’ approach —so we’re looking forward to a bright, collaborative future.”