France Telecom’s (News - Alert) flagship brand Orange Business Services has reportedly chosen Riverbed (News - Alert) Technology as a technology partner for its Enterprise Application Management service.

Orange’s Enterprise Application Management is a fully managed service that delivers application acceleration and WAN optimization with the option of a completely opex-based pricing model.

“Based on their business objectives and optimization requirements, Enterprise Application Management customers can choose from technology partners BlueCoat, Juniper and Riverbed, a recognized leader in WAN optimization and our partner since 2005 for custom-based solutions,” said Richard Heaps, head of product management, consulting and solutions integration, Orange Business Services (News - Alert). “Our customers are already benefiting: Avago achieved a 31 percent reduction in total data traffic over its network thanks to Riverbed-based Enterprise Application Management, and Lenovo (News - Alert) experienced a 50 percent increase in employee productivity.”

With applications becoming pivotal for performance and with a growing trend towards data center consolidation to save cost, the network is a critical enabler to deliver application performance and support overall business performance. Enterprise Application Management from Orange Business Services, part of the Business Acceleration solution, includes several important features.

The most prominent of these features is business-driven technology selection assessment. Consultants from Orange Business Services analyze the customer application profile to determine the most effective solution that entails least business risk. Then, the solution is fully implemented and managed by Orange Business Services.

Another feature is the flexible service model from equipment resale to a fully managed service based on customer preference.

Finally, the opex-based pricing option makes the solution effective.  Orange Business Services can provide a fully managed service with an opex-based pricing model option for customers restricted by capex spending cuts, in addition to the traditional way of providing equipment resale and professional services with Enterprise Application Management.

According to Heaps, “The move to cloud computing, when applications are provided from data centers outside a company’s premises, will further accelerate the criticality of the network and the importance of implementing the right tools to ensure the performance of business essential applications is maintained at all times.”

One of the world’s leading telecommunications operators, Orange boasts a base of 123 million customers in 220 countries and territories worldwide, with IP VPN access available in 151 countries. In addition, it has dedicated teams in more than 166 countries and territories.

Orange was placed in the Leaders quadrant in Gartner (News - Alert) Inc.’s Magic Quadrant for Asia/Pacific Network Service Providers, as per a recent TMCnet report.