• Orange is at the forefront of digital sovereignty efforts in Europe
• The telco is keen to encourage all manner of national and regional sovereign developments 
• It is attempting to lead by example
• Now it has appointed a chief trust officer to define its sovereignty strategy

When it comes to digital sovereignty, Orange is doing what it can to walk the walk as well as talk the talk. The giant European telco has followed up various announcements and actions with the appointment of Guillaume Poupard as chief trust officer with responsibility for “defining and embodying Orange’s strategy on sovereignty and trust”. 

Poupard, who will start in the role on 1 February and report to CEO Christel Heydemann, is “a recognised expert in cybersecurity,” noted the operator. He was director general of the French Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI) from 2014 to 2022 and currently serves as deputy CEO of Docaposte, the subsidiary of La Poste Group responsible for digital technologies (cybersecurity, AI and cloud). 

“In a fast-evolving geopolitical context marked by increasing pressure to reinforce digital sovereignty and trust, this appointment reflects the group’s ambition to strengthen its strategy and development in these areas,” noted Orange in this announcement. 

Poupard will work closely with Orange Business, the division of the telco that focuses on services for the enterprise sector, and Orange Cyberdefense, the telco’s cybersecurity unit, to “accelerate the development of innovative offers in cybersecurity (both on the B2C and B2B markets) and trusted cloud and AI solutions”, added Orange. 

The announcement follows the recent decision by Orange Business to migrate most of its IT systems to Bleu, the French cloud services platform that is jointly owned by Orange and Capgemini, in order to strengthen the “security and sovereignty” of its data. 

It also comes in the wake of a joint announcement from Orange CEO Heydemann and her counterpart at Deutsche Telekom, Timotheus Höttges, in which they stressed that Europe needs to do more to support its own sovereign digital platforms and announced the formation of the European Sovereign Tech Industry Alliance together with 10 other companies, including Telecom Italia (TIM) – see CEOs of DT and Orange issue digital sovereignty call to action.

Notably, Deutsche Telekom has also recently appointed a senior sovereignty executive: In September, T-Systems (DT’s enterprise services division) appointed Christine Knackfuß-Nikolic as its first chief sovereignty officer (CSO).

You can keep up to speed with all the latest sovereignty developments, and watch the on-demand recordings from TelecomTV’s recent Digital Sovereignty Forum, via our dedicated sovereignty channel. 

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV