Orange Business Services committed to a positive impact innovation

Very well. After lunch I think we have a mission with the energy in the room. I think things are okay.

We have seen that with different companies, we always ask them more energy sobriety. So it is true when I listen to you and with all of the constraints, the new constraints that have appeared and that occupy and keep us busy now for several years, we could be tempted to feel it as a burden and stop doing things. At OBS, I want to tell you, we are among the top companies that believe we have a role to play, a share to play in this collective action. And we consider these new constraints as an emergency and an opportunity as well. This is the first great idea, and I deeply believe that this defines us. It's in our roots, our DNA, our values, our commitments as we communicate in our ecosystem. My second message is a message of the ecosystem: our commitment, the green actor as seen by OBS, is very inclusive and it revolves around the ecosystem. The idea that all of this needs to move forward because it concerns everyone, and we do it with our clients, our partners, our suppliers. And yes, the third great idea is that while we respond and supply solutions to our clients that help them optimize their energy equation, we do not forget that we ourselves are a company that is changing and transforming from the inside. We have taken commitments to be neutral in carbon by 2040, ahead of 2050, and we need to be under 30% by 2030. As I said, the internal efficiency, the attention to internal efficiency needs to be carried out, and also externally. But I'm going to talk about the internal efficiency — this is the theme we have today.

Yes, it is very true. And I think the director of the group has mentioned it as well. We know who we are: we are dual, we are operators, we are integrators as well. What is high on our priorities as a network, with this accelerated digitalization and this exponential growth of usage, there's the consumption of our networks, our data centers, infrastructures in general. But I really thought what was great in the keynote: there's a lot of pragmatism. It consists in identifying the subject — our networks and data centers — measuring them, putting in place sensors to measure consumption in electricity, acting — which means regulating temperature to have less use of cooling systems because they consume a lot of energy — LED bulbs as well that can be used, and recycling, which is very important. And this creates a virtuous circle. We see the results. We have identified, we are measuring. We see very interesting results in our data centers. The engineers in the room know what I'm talking about. We can see a reduction in the short term, and we can have more trust in our commitment and be more powerful. We can divide by two the energy invoice for our data centers.

This is the meeting of technology and an ecosystem. With keywords, we see that these are the stars of technology that contribute to the optimization of energy consumption and objects in general, to make intelligent objects, with data in the middle. So I'd like to rely on an example that we worked on with Marseille and Cisco, our partner. It's very interesting because it's a form of counter-example. You'll see that it's very simple, extremely simple, and it consists in extending the Wi-Fi network when there's no use. It's counter-intuitive, because by definition networks are built to be always on. And the subtlety of this technology and the complexity of this innovation means when you switch on and off, you have levels of performance as if you had never shut it off. So this simplicity shows high complexity behind the scenes, but it's very useful. And I must say that with the ecosystem, the partners, it's very impressive. We have noticed that it's minus 40% of consumption. This is huge. And you'll say this is just common sense, but nevertheless it needed to be done for our networks. And this is why you have to work together to go in this good direction, have the right approach. When I talk about ecosystem of partners, nothing would have been possible without them. This is the first key message. And the second one is that it leads to this methodology: this co-design and innovation research and collective intelligence.

So this is an activity that mustn't be opposed to engineers, industrials. We are developing products with certain technologies that need to mature. And mature technology — what is true today when we talk about incubation — that exists within the teams that I work with. Incubation goes through several steps and it starts very early. After the ideas, you have an intuition, you feel a need, you know different points of view, and technology can open up to different points of view as well. It is followed by a process: you put people together. And unlike a laboratory, we develop things in an iterative, agile way and we validate the need in real conditions. So a partner, a client comes to test the solution. It's test and learn — these are test and learn approaches. And I believe that what is very powerful, going back to your introduction, it changes the notion of time, the relation to time. To find a solution, sometimes we need to go wrong and make mistakes. And this method of testing and learning on this platform of collective intelligence during the incubation phase helps validate a solution. And if it is validated, if it is relevant to the answer to a need, and it is thought in a native manner for the environment, if there are true benefits, you win a lot of time, you save time.

First I'd like to speak about what defines us at OBS. When we talk about value creation, this value creation is seen under four angles: for our shareholders, our employees, the company, and our clients. This fundamental idea, I believe, is one of the strong messages during the publishing of our financial results in July last year. Because these environmental topics are also crucial. This first publishing, which commits us — commits us on transparency, on our actions. We can say that by 2025, as we said, targeting 2040 a little ahead of time, there are two strong markers: one being the decrease in energy consumption and carbon emissions that must be minus 30% in 2025. It's minus 14% compared to 2020. So this shows that the cursor is going in the right direction. And there's the recycling rate as well for equipment and telephones, namely that we want to reach 30% at the end of the plan. It's at 21.5% for the moment. So as I said, a real dynamic, full transparency, values that are important because we want it to be performant. And there's a lot to do still.

Yes. The more I listen to what people said and the number of people convinced on stage and in the room, I really want to spend a lot of time understanding why. And it's interesting, we have these subjects at OBS. It's a whole equation, as I said: you need a technology, a need, a partner. Because there are things that are obvious. Technologies are going extremely fast. They are only sustainable and viable if they are open and shared by the greater number. Once this has been said, I believe that this approach that we decided to use and accelerate — it's the most pragmatic way, the most intelligent way to do things, and the most inclusive one. Another example: my neighbors at the table will recognize themselves. We talked about a different kind of innovation with positive impact — Copernicus. If I talk about Copernicus, this concerns satellites. It's a beautiful story: OBS and the program put together a data bank for satellite images with a certain number of tools onboarded on the satellites to produce terrestrial images. And I'm coming back to the opening subject: all of this is put at the disposal of a number of actors in the ecosystem. And there's a startup called Diginov that precisely uses this common good. And in France recently, this subject is important as we've seen with the forest fires, etc. So this ecosystem working on a meaningful subject with an open and shared approach, co-designing, can really help move forward.

Sébastien talked about it brilliantly, because this subject is for users. But if I come back on what you said precisely, there's a trust that is very important in digital transactions for users. This is the first benefit: giving readability and clarity so that the person knows their data perfectly. There's security as well that is important, and when we look at how much fraud exists in general, stealing one's identity can be problematic. So the user experience, when opening an account or the different approaches, when they're simple and easier. And then concerning innovation, we are putting at their disposal relevant technology that is sovereign and compliant to the future you describe, when we look at this subject on the European level.

I think this great example carries a lot of success recipes. What is our contribution? Facilitate sharing of data. When we are operators and integrators at the same time, we use the entire chain, and this is something that defines us and has been doing so for many years. Reducing drastically fraud, as we said, this fraud litigation, and helping the greater number to use data and add value in their activities. And securing property rights and intellectual property rights as well. So we have realized that these will have different shapes when we talk about data and the huge use across all sectors.

As I was saying at the beginning, we don't want to choose anxiety or non-action, seeing the complexity of the challenges. However, we've seen a positive impact in the past, in the present, and the future. This is something that defines us. It's who we are and our vision about technology: technology is only good if it allows us to bring about progress.

Thank you very much.