Orange Business Services delivers global SD-WAN to Siemens

Seeing more applications hosted in cloud environments instead of on-premise datacentres, thus requiring a secure and flexible way for connectivity via the internet, leading multinational conglomerate corporation and industrial manufacturing firm Siemens has partnered with Orange Business Services (OBS) to develop a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN).

The implementation of SD-WAN is designed to deliver significant benefits for Siemens’ locations by simplifying the management of complex environments and providing improved performance and agility.

Siemens is credited by OBS as being a pioneer in this process and overcoming potential implementation challenges during the pandemic, OBS, working with technology partner Cisco, has been able to fully deliver one of the biggest SD-WAN deployments in the world with 1,168 Siemens sites in 94 countries now successfully migrated to the new architecture as part of its digital transformation programme.

Like a number of leading global firms faced with similar challenges, Siemens started its migration years before the pandemic, a decision that the company believes proved more valuable than they could have imagined as the pandemic not only brought implementation challenges but drove home the need to have a reliable and future-proof communications network.

Based on Cisco technology, the OBS Flexible SD-WAN solution consolidates network design and maintenance for Siemens’ locations globally with Orange Business Services as its digital services provider. With the platform, Siemens has simplified the management of complex environments and further improved performance and agility and as more and more applications are hosted in cloud environments instead of on-premise datacentres, this required a secure and flexible way for connectivity via the internet. SD-WAN enabled the switch from traditional access via virtual private networks to internet-based application access.

“Siemens is a global company with offices and production sites all over the world, and we need a reliable and future-proof communications network. It’s a critical business enabler that has to be agile enough to evolve with our business,” explained Hanna Hennig, CIO of Siemens AG.

“As a pioneer in innovation and technology, we set the highest standards for our transformation project. With the global capabilities, expertise and orchestration of Orange Business Services, we were able to successfully complete the massive deployment of Flexible SD-WAN, which delivers decisive advantages for our business and users alike, including a streamlined user experience with dynamic traffic routing for applications as well as dynamic bandwidth allocation.”

The SD-WAN coverage also provides the foundation for a flexible Siemens security framework. This approach, claims OBS, has further increased Siemens’ abilities to effectively mitigate, detect and respond to risks.

“We are so pleased that Siemens chose Orange Business Services to be its trusted partner,” added Aliette Mousnier-Lompre, interim CEO at Orange Business Services. “Deploying, migrating and implementing this huge digital transformation project for Siemens and managing their critical global communications infrastructure underlines our end-to-end integrator expertise in delivering large-scale global projects. We have delivered on Siemens’ objectives by combining SD-WAN technology with cloud-based services and solutions.”