Orange Business Services upgrades global ICT infrastructure of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belgium

On December 8, 2020 the Orange Business Services company announced upgrade of global communication infrastructure of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belgium (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belgium). The contract provides updating of networks, security systems and infrastructure of applications in 118 divisions of the Ministry in 87 countries. The additional fault tolerance of networks will be provided by the integrated satellite services Orange Business Services. Such approach guarantees the high level of performance, stability and security of the ICT infrastructure necessary for diplomatic personnel of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belgium for support of interests of her citizens both in the country, and beyond its limits.

Solutions support migration of the Ministry on Office 365 and meet the requirement to store critically significant information on servers in Belgium. Flexible SD-WAN guarantees the high level of security of network and cloud connections and also provides optimization of applications. The elasticity is reached due to use of the uCPE platform and the systems of virtualization. The satellite Orange Business Services segment will integrally add infrastructure where other types of communication are unavailable. Besides, local and wireless networks in all points of presence of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belgium will be updated. Services in security management will become available both at the network layer, and in a cloud.

The agreement provides formation of the innovation fund in the amount of 800 thousand euros a year for projects which will help the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belgium to follow the strategy of digital transformation. Creation of a management system master given (normative reference information) Orange — Business & Decision subsidiary company will become the first of numerous joint projects.

Based on the corporate Microsoft Teams platform integrated into the solution Office 365 services of unified communications which will provide to the Belgian diplomats a working space of the future will be unrolled. It assumes migration of all jobs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belgium on the updated infrastructure and also direct routing and Business Talk (service of routing of voice calls in multiregional networks passing public service networks) that will allow to cut down communication expenses considerably.

Flexible SD-WAN using uCPE on remote objects will provide virtualization of network functions (NFV). It will allow the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belgium to set remotely software and to manage infrastructure that gives clear advantage in the conditions of complexity of deployment of network equipment on a global scale.

Orange Business Services and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belgium cooperate more than ten years, since 2008. In 2015 the MFA selected Orange Business Services solution provider of protection of access from mobile devices to message exchange systems, applications and data for prevention of loss and theft of information. It became the first step to creation of a safe mobile workplace within digital transformation of the Ministry.

Partnership with Orange Business Services — a part of long-term strategy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belgium, in which priority of an innovation, security and flexibility. Orange — the ideal partner for upgrade of our infrastructure, and will allow to satisfy the innovation fund most flexibly and quickly not only current demands of the ministry, but also those which will appear tomorrow, — Philip Dumortier, the director of ICT of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belgium told

This agreement — a key step in digital transformation of the Belgian Foreign Ministry. Orange has extensive knowledge in this area, servicing tens of the different Ministries of Foreign Affairs worldwide. We are glad to continue our innovation partnership with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belgium and to confirm the status of the best partner for data protection of the Belgian officials and citizens of the country staying abroad — commented on Fabris de Fabrice de Windt, the senior vice president for Europe of Orange Business Services