5 battles I want to fight in 2025

Equip Orange Business employees for what’s to come??

Yes I know, the problem is: it’s very hard to predict what’s to come, so how do I make sure Orange Business employees are best equipped to navigate the changing landscape ahead???

It’s pretty simple: by the end of 2025, I do not want anyone to be behind, to rely on outdated #skills. We started our upskilling and reskilling program 18 months ago. Whether it's Cloud Architects, Generative AI Experts, or Client Security Managers, we train our employees on the jobs that are at the heart of a secure, efficient digital transformation. And the Employee NPS of 41 for those who went through the program says it all.?

Our objective by the end of the year is to have 5,000 employees gone through an upskilling or reskilling path, and 20,000 certifications obtained (my LinkedIn timeline is very busy with those at the moment!). Just to put things in perspective, there are about 30,000 employees at Orange Business, so this is a battle on a very large scale!??

In this context, it’s critical to help everyone get on board the Gen AI train. We were off to a great start in 2024, with Orange Business boasting over 13,000 users of our internal Generative AI toolbox. I am proud to be one of them, for instance extensively using it as a sparring partner to help me gather, structure and challenge ideas around a given topic, especially when I’m preparing a speech. What I want in 2025 is for everyone at Orange Business to have felt the power of Gen AI for their work so that they can draw their conclusions about how they want to use it. ?

Put innovation at the heart of what we do for customers??

Two major innovations-disruptions will keep us very busy in 2025. ??

First, quantum. We are actively working to ensure our infrastructure is ready for the #Quantum future. Although Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently ignited the debate suggesting that quantum computers are two decades away, we are determined at Orange Business to move fast on quantum-safe networks. Because, while industrial large-scale quantum computing will indeed probably take time to advance, access to quantum computing resources is likely to become available to States and powerful organizations in the near future, enabling them to decrypt any kind of data they want. This means that Quantum-safe networks are urgently needed for many of our customers. Implementing these networks will safeguard their sensitive data against the well-known “harvest now, decrypt later” strategies employed by certain States. We have already run successful tests by combining post-quantum cryptography with quantum key distribution. We are starting pilots with a few major customers in the Paris area and 2025 should see our first commercial offers.

Second, AI and #GenAI. Actual deployments at scale, in particular for small and medium businesses, are still the exception. At Orange, we are incredibly lucky to have a very powerful internal GenAI toolbox developed in-house, by Orange Innovation (poke Bruno Zerbib and Steve Jarrett ). To be completely honest, I don’t think I have seen many (any?) such large scale adoption of GenAI. We are making this solution available to customers, it’s called Live Intelligence Open. It’s not just a “secure GPT” with a chatbot. It embarks a library of actions, with pre-defined prompts and their system configuration (LLM, temperature, behavior instructions…) ready to use and created by the business – legal, marketing, HR, etc. Anyone can propose an Action, which means that Live Intelligence Open is becoming a collaborative tool GenAI adoption. ?

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Give a new meaning to Digital Trust??

The past years have been unprecedented in terms of regulatory activities for tech (some of you are familiar with the long list of scary acronyms such as NIS2, DORA, CSRD, etc). While it’s important for us as citizens, it will make things more complicated for our customers in multiple areas such as network and IT security, AI, information protection or data privacy. What it concretely means is that organizations now need a deeper understanding of #regulatory frameworks, technology dynamics, and evolving risks to meet new requirements. In 2025, many of them will have to adapt their policies, reporting mechanisms, monitoring systems, and governance structures to ensure compliance. And global organization will need to do that in all jurisdictions they operate in, while regulations are increasingly diverging between Europe, the US and Asian countries.

This will more than ever create complexity for businesses operating across multiple continents. Orange Business has been accumulating experience in managing this complexity, for instance accompanying most of the French major companies in building their connectivity and tech stack in China, or reversely supporting many Chinese enterprises in their activities in Europe. More globally, we help our European customers benefiting from all the US and Chinese innovation while staying compliant with the EU rules of the game.??

In 2025, I want to shift this constraint into an opportunity and a key differentiator. This will require investments. It's not just about being compliant – which is an obvious prerequisite. It’s about enabling our customers to seize the fantastic innovation capabilities of cloud, data, network virtualization and AI while protecting their assets and intellectual property in line with the European standards. This will be particularly important in sectors such as health, energy, banks, insurance, defense, or public administrations. The competitiveness of the European economy is at stake. To do so, we will start by making the right investments into trusted cloud for our own IT. We will also adapt our operating model to offer the right level of “Europeanness” and the right price for each customer, including those requiring services built and run exclusively in Europe by EU citizens.??

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Strengthen our internal alignment to deliver unique value to customers?

After two years of intense focus on our internal transformation, it’s time to reap its benefits. We have achieved a lot, the teams have been nothing short of extraordinary.??

We have simplified our product portfolio, we have made our value proposition clearer, we have brought many decisions to teams closer to customers. Now, in 2025, I want to work on alignment: I want everyone in the organization to never have to wonder what is a priority and what is not, to never have to reinvent our strategy because it’s not detailed enough at local level.??

We are doing this by defining a limited number of Customer Value Propositions (CVPs) – in fact, across all our markets, we have chosen 9 of them. With this, we decide which customer problems we want to focus on. This means that sales, product development, operations, marketing know what to invest time in, all together and at the same time.

Such alignment is also central in how we deliver our new solutions through a genuine #platform model, ensuring we adopt a modular approach and that everyone participates in the API ecosystem, fitting into the same architectural blueprint. This is particularly visible in our “Evolution Platform” initiative, which encapsulates our next-gen secured digital infrastructure offerings. Our alignment and platform approach are now clearly enabling us to accelerate our roadmaps, with our first 70 customers onboard and a €1,5B pipeline.?

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Achieve Orange Business's financial health recovery to ensure a sustainable future for our customers and employees?

As leaders, we don’t have the luxury of sitting behind a screen, judging events from a distance. We must confront uncertainty head-on and make fast decisions, all while navigating the ongoing dilemma between short-term performance and long-term value creation. In our efforts to recover Orange Business's financial health, we face critical choices. For instance, at the intersection of artificial intelligence and environmental stakes, should we prioritize immediate gains, potentially jeopardizing our long-term sustainability, or invest on sustainable practices that may require difficult trade-offs? ?

The path forward involves addressing these dilemmas openly with all stakeholders, especially our employees. It’s about finding the right balance. I am committed to integrating long-term value creation into all my strategic decisions, understanding that this commitment may invite scrutiny. This battle in 2025 is a battle not for financial KPIs, but for the future, for the long term. It matters because we provide trusted and sustainable solutions for #digital transformations, and it feels more important than ever to do this right.

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2025 is going to be bumpy. With these five battles, I am aiming for positive change. And this is exactly what I wish to each and everyone of us.