Haier Europe taps Orange Business to build responsive SD-WAN

As part of its drive to establish itself as a composable, data-driven enterprise, Haier Europe has chosen Orange Business to deploy connectivity and internet of things (IoT) services to help innovate its sustainable offerings, while optimising resource consumption and extending the life of products.

Founded in 1984, Haier Group has a mission statement of adhering to the development principle of “human value comes first”, and says it has developed from a small collective factory on the verge of collapse into a leading ecosystem enterprise in the IoT era after going through six strategic stages. The seven-year cycle at each stage is not a deliberate action, but the “inevitable result of development by grasping opportunities of the times”.

In December 2019, it entered the stage of the ecosystem brand strategy, creating leading IoT ecosystem brands as the goal.

Haier Europe is the owner of major appliances brands such as Candy, Hoover and Haier. As part of its go-to-market strategy, the company said it’s seeking a flexible platform to support its vision to be the first consumer choice for smart home offerings. Taking pride in its product innovation, Haier was looking for a cloud-first platform that could align technology with its business objectives to maintain its competitive advantage. Furthermore, Haier was in search of a composable and adaptable network that delivers a complete end-to-end service, with both openness and advanced security.

“As part of our transformation, we needed a platform that would help us optimise operations and efficiencies within our cloud-first strategy,” said Simone Pezzoli, group chief digital technology officer at Haier Europe. “Orange Business provides us with an agile and composable platform, simplifying cloud connectivity and automation, while being elastic enough to satisfy our dynamic business model and digital ambitions.”

The digital, on-demand and modular service proposed by Orange Business is intended to contribute to Haier’s design, production and consumption practices. For example, the company is currently developing a “servitisation” model known as “pay-per-wash”, which is managed directly by Haier’s apps.

Orange Business is combining its global cloud connectivity and embedded cyber security capabilities to support Haier’s digital transformation journey. The technology combines a network-as-a-service experience with an open ecosystem to enable Haier to access services as needed, all fortified by performance-focused SLAs.

With the Evolution Platform, Orange Business said it has defined a roadmap based on orchestrating three pivotal building blocks, which are cloud, connectivity and cyber security. The initial Haier deployment includes a flexible software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN), with Orange Business consultants advising on the underlay and overlay options to best suit the business.

Security is delivered via a protection suite to secure 5,000 users supported by the Orange Cyberdefense. Orange cloud connectivity provides secure access to multi-clouds via SD-WAN. This is managed by a customer portal together with a network performance monitoring service to provide both control and visibility.

“Haier Europe will benefit from our cloud, connectivity and security expertise through Evolution Platform,” said Francesca Puggioni, managing director for Southern Europe at Orange Business.

“This highly optimised platform is designed to accelerate digital transformation while providing high visibility on processes to enhance business performance. We are excited for the opportunity to offer this solution to a leading company like Haier Europe and support them in their digital journey.”