[En] Orange Business Blogs

IPv6: the next generation of Internet addressing

2011-06-07T14:50:33Z

disclosure: this post was written with the help of external contributors under the supervision of Edwige Cottigny and the Orange Business Services Internet and Digital media team

IPv6: the next generation of Internet addressing

Do you know what June 8, 2011 is? It’s “World IPv6 Day”, as named by the Internet Society. The day will be a “test drive” for Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) before full rollouts with major content providers like Google, Yahoo and Facebook take place. Like these, the Orange Business Services's web site will be visible today over ipv6.

But is the cyber world really prepared for the biggest upgrade in its 40-year history?

The foundation for Internet communication

The Internet involves the transfer of data in small packets that are independently routed across networks, as specified by an international communications agreement known as the Internet Protocol. Each data packet has two numeric addresses: origin and destination. Since 1981, Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) has been the publicly used version. Although IPv4 proved sufficient during the early stages of the Internet, it has been struggling to cope with today’s demand. That’s where IPv6 comes in.

Bigger is better

IPv6’s primary advantage over IPv4 is its virtually unlimited number of addresses. As The Journal’s Francesca Craggs describes in her article “Internet running out of space”, the number of IP addresses is quickly diminishing as a result of the explosive popularity of smartphones and other gadgets with Internet connectivity. Simply put, any device—printer, scanner, tablet, mobile phone—attempting to get onto a network must have an address to connect.

IPv4’s 32-bit capacity enables 4.2 billion addresses—less than a single IP address per person on the planet. In fact, the last top level block of free IPv4 addresses was assigned in February 2011. IPv6’s 128-bit capacity translates to 340 trillion trillion trillion addresses, or 670 quadrillion addresses per square millimetre of the Earth’s surface. While IPv6 solves the capacity issue, migration has moved at a snail’s pace because every device needs to be upgraded to this system, a time-consuming and costly effort to say the least.

Paving the way for succession

In “The Next Web Gold Rush: IPv6”, Forbes’ Eric Savitz suggests that today’s global networks will continue to support both IPv4 and IPv6 for the next few years but all businesses connected to the Internet need to anticipate the pending migration and plan their budgets accordingly. He suggests 3 steps for businesses to adopt in order to plan for an effective implementation:

• Step 1: Conduct an inventory of all the devices that currently require a network connection
• Step 2: Research each vendor’s support pages to determine if the device requires a simple software update or a complete hardware refresh
• Step 3: Assess the upgrade costs and integrate them into a normal IT refresh cycle
Ready or not, IPv6 is destined to become the protocol of choice. I’ve already marked June 8 in my calendar: something tells me it’s going to be the start of something epic in the cyber world.

Orange Business Live in Washington DC

2010-09-23T12:22:03Z

Next week, Orange Business Services will host Orange Business Live in Washington DC for our North American customers. Bill Taylor, entrepreneur and co-founder, Fast Company, and co-author of best-selling, Mavericks at Work,will provide the keynote address and show the Orange Business Live audience how to learn from these mavericks and begin the process of rethinking competition, reinventing innovation, and reconnecting with customers and redesigning work.

Topics will center around combining innovation with cost efficiency, including:

• adaptable IT for a changing business environment
• innovations and key innovations and trends for 2011
• cultural diversity and innovation
• overcoming challenges in emerging markets
• cloud ready networking: innovations in the network to enable safe and fast cloud computing
• visual collaboration: a new way of doing business
• Orange Strategy for 2011 and Beyond

Presenters include:

Vivek Badrinath, CEO, Orange Business Services
Diane Einterz, Senior Vice President, Americas
George Nahon, CEO, Orange Labs, San Francisco
plus many more...

We will provide live updates, videos and photos from the event here on our Orange Business Live blog as it takes place next week.

the Orange Business Services digital strategy (1 hour presentation + comments)

2010-06-14T05:00:00Z

If you haven't been able to attend the Ragan Social Media summit which took place in San Jose or even online, you can still have a feel of what my presentation was. The pitch was about our work at Orange Business Services with regard to Social Media. Here is the slidecast, inclusive of all comments and please note that this is a downloadable presentation, and that there is no copyright, this is a creative commons presentation (details are included on slide 2).

[En] Increasing Brand Advocay with Social Media [Ragan Social Media Summit - June 10, 2010]

View more webinars from Yann Gourvennec.

our Social Media strategy in plain English

2010-02-04T06:49:26Z

On Nov 10th, 2009 I was in Atlanta presenting at Blogwell on behalf of Orange Business Services, presenting our social media strategy and explaining how, why and what we did online to increase our brand advocacy. Yesterday, the video recording of that presentation was posted by SMBC and - assuming your firewall isn't going to block Vimeo - you are kindly invited to click the following image in order to view the recorded session. And if your firewall does block Vimeo, or that you find the quality a bit flaky, you are now left with the possibility of contacting me via the comments section of this post and then I can tell you how video can be made available to all easily and qualitatively, which is what I explain in that recording.

here is the introduction to the video by the SMBC representatives:

In his BlogWell Atlanta case study presentation, "Succeeding in Social Media Initiatives," Orange Business Services' Head of Internet & Digital Media, Yann Gourvennec, explained how they're finding success in social media as a business-to-business brand. Yann's case study covered how they're finding passionate buyers online that advertising can't reach, how they're using video, and how they've used social media feedback to improve their products. --- BlogWell is the only conference where social media executives from large companies come together to share their case studies, offer practical how-to advice, and answer your questions. To learn more about BlogWell, visit gaspedal.com/blogwell/ BlogWell is produced by GasPedal and the Social Media Business Council. Learn More: gaspedal.com and socialmedia.org

Orange Business TV tour in the US (1st leg: Atlanta)

2009-09-22T15:04:30Z

We have embarked on a series of webtv interviews with some of our key Orange people at Atlanta, Ga. This is only the first leg of the journey in which we will spend three days

Joel, the man behind Orange Business TV (left) is fine tuning his brand new HD digital camera within the board meeting room in the Orange Business Atlanta office, minutes before an interview with Ken Prock, Head of North American Regional Operations. Ken gave us a very interesting interview explaining how Orange Business works from the inside from a client service point of view. He namely gave details about what happens when national disasters happen in North American. As it happens, we landed in Atlanta in the midst of very serious flashfloods which kept the region under water. Ken's story was very compelling and even more so because of this. Joel is now backing up the stories on disk. Editing will take place a soon as we are back in Europe and then we'll post everything on our Orange Business TV platform (which is soon to receive a facelift by the way)

Telecom Services Excellence in Customer Care -- Who Cares?

2009-09-21T08:21:12Z

The Orange Business Services Strategy to Manage by Customer Loyalty Index

In the current economic climate Customer Care is more important than ever before.

Customers face various uncertainties and they need to be assured of the quality of their suppliers: trust is key.

The most important corporate priority is to deliver outstanding Customer Care.
Ensuring Customers expectations are met and an exemplary end-to-end experience provided all of the time generates and maintains their loyalty.
This matching of expectations with experience should be regularly checked and enhanced throughout the development of Customer relationships.
Quality of service and Customer Care are increasingly significant factors in the quality-price balance and with decreasing tolerance of service and process issues only suppliers with proven Customer Care credentials and business relationship spirit will give their customers the required sense of increased trust and sustainability.

This generates a more in-depth partnership and mutual success for both customer and supplier: regaining control for the customer and guaranteeing income for the supplier.

find out more and download this IDC report (PDF)

RFID in the supply chain

2009-08-31T16:49:20Z

The whole chain from the initial order of a product to the final delivery with picking/shipping at supplier's premises, transport/delivery and end consumer and partners traceability requests.

Portrait of an Internet pioneer

2009-03-31T13:00:00Z

We have just published a series of portraits and one of the videos on which I'd like to focus is that of our friend and colleague Rob Evans. Rob is not in charge of developing social media in the UK although he would have every right to be. He is in fact head of telecom integrated operator group. In essence, his job is about Sourcing. His involvement in social media and the Internet in general is stirred by passion, I think you'll get that from the interview.

He has been online since 1996-1997 working with the mobile industry and he has been a blogger since ... 2003! That is to say one year before O'Reilly coined the phrase Web 2.0 at a famous conference. What I find most fascinating in Rob's story though is not just that, but how he can use his passion and extra-curricular activities to fuel his day to day job. Most impressive stuff.
Rob's articles on the Orange Business Live blog can be found by clicking this link.

the people behind ... series (part one)

2009-03-03T17:06:26Z

When we started building our new page about outsourcing (aka) Large Projects at Orange Business Services we then decided to add a new section about the "people behind large project". It appeared to us that it would be rather interesting to get our people who actually get things done in the field to explain what large projects was about and what we were delivering and how and seeing the people that our clients actually meet in person when they decide to embark on a deal. Most of the people I interviewed in this series are guys whom I worked with in the field, responding to rfp's etc. One of our first videos to be posted on the http://orange-business.tv webtv site is that of Rob Hodgkinson - Head of practices and training - who explains what Large Projects is about. A section is also devoted to this on the website at that URL.

a new landing page for our Orange blogs

2009-02-26T15:26:55Z

Our blog galaxy is building up. We are now proposing this new landing page as a means to better navigate the sites and social media spaces that we have created for you. At the top of this page you will have a list of the most recent updates on our blogs, sorted by date and with a link to the original article. Below is another blog which our Orange Business Services web team will be using in order to warn you of all the new features that we have prepared for our readers. And I can assure you that there are quite a few.