Frost & Sullivan Accolade for Orange Business Services’ Exceptional Product Differentiation Innovation in the CPE MSS Market


LONDON – March 19, 2007 - Frost & Sullivan honours Orange Business Services with the Product Differentiation Innovation Award in the customer premise equipment (CPE) managed security services (MSS) market. The Award recognises Orange Business Services’ Unified Defense Service - the first unified threat management (UTM) service launched by a global managed security service provider (MSSP) on a global scale.

Previously known as Equant, Orange Business Services has established a strong presence across global MSS markets with its cutting-edge product and service offerings. In October 2006, the company significantly enhanced its product portfolio with the introduction of its pioneering Unified Defense Service.

“Orange’s Unified Defense Service includes firewall and antivirus as a core service,” notes Frost & Sullivan Industry Manager Jose Lopez. “In addition, it includes two standard optional features: intrusion detection and prevention and web filtering. By the end of the first quarter of 2007, it will also include authentication as an optional feature.”

The service is offered in four different configurations including branch office, small site, corporate site and data centre. The UTM appliances are customer dedicated and the service can be offered at Orange’s data centres or at the customers’ premises. This choice of location deployment gives customers very high flexibility when deciding their security strategies.

“Moreover, the service is offered at a very competitive price and has a transparent charge model, with the customer being given a price that includes all hardware, software, licenses, maintenance and dynamic updates,” adds Mr. Lopez. “There is a one-time charge and a monthly recurring charge per appliance and feature – all of which makes MSS a very attractive proposition for SMEs and larger organisations with multiple remote sites behaving like individual SMEs.”

In addition, the level of service management offered by Orange is very comprehensive. Orange offers full management support to its customers, including all required service updates, security management as well as fault and problem management, covering hardware replacement, monitoring and reporting.

“Orange Business Services has launched a truly innovative managed service, which brings MSS closer to small organisations and allows larger organisations to extend the level of protection required for their remote sites,” observes Mr. Lopez. “This managed UTM service represents an important change in the MSS market, which was in need of such service.”

The Frost & Sullivan Award for Product Differentiation Innovation is presented each year to the company that has best demonstrated the ability to develop and/or advance products with more innovative capabilities than competing vendors and products. This Award recognises the company’s successful adoption of new or existing technology that has become a part of its
well-designed product family. Such innovation is expected to significantly contribute to the industry in terms of product performance and degree/rate of technical change.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognise companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.


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