Orange Business wraps massive 1,100-site SD-WAN rollout with Siemens

It was several years in the making but Orange Business Services announced it has finally completed a sprawling SD-WAN deployment with Siemens which covered a total of 1,168 sites across 94 countries. Laurent Perrin, director of product management for application driven networks at Orange Business Services, told Fierce the rollout was one of its largest to date.

Perrin said the operator’s SD-WAN deployments for clients typically cover an average of 300 to 400 sites. While Orange Business does have a handful of customers whose SD-WAN rollouts have stretched into the 2,000 to 3,000-site range, he said the size of the Siemens project is still notable. But what really made the project special, he said, was the complexity.

“You may see large, very large networks in SD-WAN, but usually it’s about retail customers. With retail customers...all the sites are the same,” he explained. “I think when we defined the requirements with Siemens they have nine or ten different site profiles in their network, meaning with different requirements. They have also very complex routing requirements because they are mixing sales activity but also manufacturing activity. So lots of complexity in this network which makes it a more challenging transformation.”

According to Perrin, the project got its start back in 2017 and began with extensive testing in the lab to determine which solutions were the best fit for Siemens’ needs. The pair, working in the pre-secure access service edge (SASE) era, opted for a best-of-breed approach, mixing Cisco’s SD-WAN with cloud security from ZScaler. Siemens inked a 240 million-euro deal to officially become Orange Business’ first Flexible SD-WAN customer in 2018 and by the end of 2020 the project was 80% complete.

By switching from MPLS to SD-WAN, Perrin said the internet has effectively become Siemens’ new corporate network.

Orange Business was ranked as the top global provider of managed SD-WAN in Vertical Systems Group’s mid-2021 leaderboard for the segment, topping heavyweights including AT&T, Verizon, NTT, BT Group and Telefonica. Since striking its deal with Siemens, Perrin said its SD-WAN business has grown to include around 60 customers, including Sony and commercial bank BNP Paribas.

“The demand is massively going to SD-WAN now,” Perrin said, adding the technology usually serves as the foundation of customers’ digital transformation plans. “The renewal of customers, the new customers, it’s mainly on SD-WAN.”