Cisco and Orange Business Services have embarked on a major network upgrade project to improve and extend Orange Business Services’ international Internet Protocol virtual private network (IP VPN).

The project will help Orange Business Services bring new advanced services to multinational organizations on a global basis, expanding its portfolio of innovative collaboration solutions that combine voice, data and video to include Cisco Unified Communications and Cisco TelePresence for virtual ‘in-person’ meetings.

Cisco and Orange Business Services have collaborated over the past decade to develop a market-leading portfolio of IP VPN services based on Cisco IP Next-Generation Network (IP NGN) architecture. This new phase of network development will introduce greater efficiencies through the convergence of multiple legacy networks into one end-to-end IP network and add new capabilities such as multicast VPN and IPv6 over MultiProtocol Label Switching (MPLS) at the network edge. The deployment of a new generation of Cisco IP NGN routing technology will bring Orange Business Services’ international network even closer to its customers’ locations to deliver consistent quality of experience in 220 countries and territories.

“Rich media and Web 2.0 are driving the next wave of business productivity,” added Pankaj Patel, senior vice president for the Service Provider Technology Group at Cisco. “With the latest phase in the transformation of Orange Business Services’ network, we are working together even more closely to offer an increasingly integrated set of services to Orange Business Services customers.”

Orange Business Services achieved Cisco Global Certified Partner status in September 2007, the first service provider partner to reach this goal worldwide.

Orange is the key brand of France Telecom. France Telecom serves more than 172 million customers in five continents as of March 31, 2008, of which two thirds are Orange customers.