• Bouygues Telecom has established a new digital services unit that focuses on cloud, data and cybersecurity
• The operator has been following an ambitious B2B expansion strategy since 2021
• Rivals Iliad and Orange have also been putting more resources into sovereign cloud and AI services to bolster their B2B propositions

France’s telcos have been recalibrating their business-to-business (B2B) activities as they seek to meet the rapidly changing needs of enterprise customers and address the rising demand for sovereign and secure solutions in a market environment best described as turbulent and unpredictable. 

This week, for example, Bouygues Telecom has carved out a new unit with a particular focus on data, cloud and cybersecurity, and in the process has rebranded its digital services subsidiary C2S as Bouygues Telecom Business Solution. Bouygues Telecom originally acquired C2S from parent company Bouygues Group at the end of 2023. 

Adrien d’Ussel, who previously served as director of ICT services at Bouygues Telecom Business, has been appointed CEO of the new entity and will oversee 300 ‘experts’ spread over five key areas: Networks and unified communications; mobile solutions; cybersecurity; infrastructure and cloud; and digital and data factory.

According to a LinkedIn post, the objective of the new unit, which is “dedicated to ICT services”, is to “support technological transformations, from consulting to integration, to managed services”.

The move comes a few months after Bouygues Telecom’s enterprise division launched two new commercial brands to strengthen its position on the B2B market: The above-mentioned Bouygues Telecom Business, aimed at mid-size companies, larger corporations, administrations and public companies; and Bouygues Telecom Pro, which is targeted at professionals and SMEs.

Then in April, the former C2S, whose ICT and cyber activities fall within Bouygues Telecom Business, agreed to acquire SecInfra, a company specialising in IT infrastructure security.

The various activities all form part of Bouygues Telecom’s Ambition 2026 programme. Outlined at the Capital Markets Day in 2021, one of the strategy’s aims is to double Bouygues Telecom’s market share in fixed B2B services and become a player in wholesale fixed services. Whether that will be achieved remains to be seen, but the operator has been expanding its digital enterprise service activities since the strategy was announced.

In February, François Treuil, director of the enterprise division of Bouygues Telecom, claimed that the unit, which has 2,000 employees, has “changed dimension” over the past five years because of its ambitious development strategy. As well as C2S, the operator has acquired enterprise service providers Keyyo, Nerim (now integrated with Keyyo), Alleo and Apizee during this period.

Rival strategies

In the meantime, Bouygues Telecom’s rivals have been evolving their own B2B strategies with a particular focus on artificial intelligence-based solutions and sovereign cloud. 

Orange Business is currently undergoing a transformation process as part of Orange’s ‘Lead the future’ strategy, with the aim of shifting the focus to more profitable areas such as generative AI, cloud and cybersecurity and reducing reliance on legacy offerings such as voice.

Orange noted in its financial statements for the 2024 financial year that the plan includes the “discontinuation of the commercialisation of around 150 products and services” as well as the elimination of several hundred jobs on a voluntary basis.  

The operator is also in the process of launching Bleu, a joint venture with Capgemini that will provide trusted cloud (“Cloud de Confiance”) services to address the needs of specific French organisations. The new venture recently passed the “J0” milestone in the process to gainSecNumCloud 3.2 qualification from France’s cybersecurity agency ANSSI.

And with security in mind, Orange Business, the operator’s B2B services division, recently unveiled a quantum-safe networking service dubbed Orange Quantum Defender. 

In other activities, Orange Business has launched dedicated units such as LiveNet for marketing network APIs and, just this week, a new defence and security division, headed by its former chief trust officer Nassima Auvray.  

Iliad, meanwhile, launched Iliad Pro in 2021 to build a presence in the B2B market. More recently, it has been heavily investing in the “value chain of artificial intelligence”, as described by CEO Thomas Reynaud during the earnings call for the 2024 financial year. In February, Iliad said it had allocated a total of €3bn to invest in AI-dedicated infrastructure, research and application layers.

The group is now focusing on building up its datacentre subsidiary OpCore and cloud provider unit Scaleway, which Reynaud called the “first provider of AI GPUs in Europe”. Like its rivals, Iliad is keen to become a “tech champion for digital sovereignty in Europe”. 

In March, Iliad completed the planned sale of a 50% stake in OpCore to private equity firm InfraVia with the aim of developing the business into a “major independent European hyperscale datacentre platform”. 

For its part, Scaleway has announced plans to launch its services in Italy and Sweden. In April, the cloud unit also acquired Saagie, a French DataOps platform that it said provides key technologies to accelerate data and AI projects.

As for Altice France-owned SFR, its future remains up in the air. Owner Patrick Drahi is said to be seeking a sale of the operator, with latest reports suggesting he is hoping to raise around €23bn (the valuation includes €15bn of debt). According to BFMTV, discussions on a potential sale have accelerated in recent weeks, and Bouygues and Iliad are apparently interested in splitting SFR’s assets between them. This includes SFR Business, which is reportedly worth about €3bn.

- Anne Morris, Contributing Editor, TelecomTV