Orange bolsters cloud game with €350mn Basefarm purchase

Orange has given its enterprise cloud business a shot in the arm after completing the acquisition of  infrastructure and critical application services company Basefarm.

The acquisition, which was initially announced back in July, is geared at reinforcing Orange Business Services’ (OBS) position in the cloud computing services market. Having been founded in 2000, Basefarm generated more than €100 million in revenue over the last twelve months helping companies gain more insight from their usage data. Orange can now add data management and analytics services to its portfolio.

“We are very proud to announce the acquisition of Basefarm, which will mark a major milestone in our international development,” said OBS CEO Helmut Reisinger, while announcing the acquisition in July. “In particular, the company’s integration will enable us to significantly extend our Big Data and critical application management services on a rapidly consolidating market.”

The acquisition will also extend OBS’ ability to offer access to public or private cloud infrastructure, as well as more complex automated services. Although a small slice of the larger Orange pie, OBS has been steadily growing over the last couple of years, both organically and through various acquisitions. Business & Decision is another business which was added into the OBS stable recently, with this purchase targeting the data services integrator market.

“We are very pleased with Orange’s decision to acquire Basefarm, a sign of our continued success in Europe,” said Fredrik Ohlsen, CEO of Basefarm.

“Orange is already a major player in the cloud services business and our two companies are very well matched in terms of our product portfolio, and also when it comes to geographical spread. Together we’re able to build a pan-European leader in cloud managed services, something which will benefit Basefarm and our customers.”

What is still unclear is the scale of redundancies as a result of the acquisition. As with every deal of this nature, there will be overlap in certain service areas, though no comments have been made as to how many of the 550 Basefarm staff will be integrated into the 1600 OBS workforce.

While Orange has continued to create a strong position for itself in the French cloud market, acquisitions like Basefarm will add credentials for international ambitions with its strong base in Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Austria and Germany. With the former head of the international business now sitting in the CEOs chair, this might not be the last bit of posturing across the continent.

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