Orange is the key brand of France Telecom, one of the world’s leading

telecommunications operators. As the number three mobile operator and number

two provider of broadband internet services in Europe, as well as a global leader in

telecom services for MNC’s, Orange Group's strategy is characterized by a strong

focus on innovation and working to develop its position in new growth activities.

One area of growth opportunity lies in API publication. In much the same way that

publishing a Web site can expose a local business to a global marketplace, making

APIs available online can help drive new partnerships, improve customer satisfaction

and build value added services around a brand, all of which can lead to increased

revenue opportunities. Orange’s Nursery initiative is aimed at just that – publishing

their telecom services, provisioning, management and configuration APIs in order to

foster innovation and reduce cost of/time to market for new services.

The Business Challenge

But the Nursery was originally envisioned as a walled garden, intended for France Telecom’s internal divisions and

select partners who have the resources, expertise and technology infrastructure in place to take advantage of such

an initiative. Emerging countries, with their under-resourced developer communities and infrastructure limitations

(i.e., unreliable power/broadband infrastructure) are not able to easily leverage the full range of functionality

offered by the Nursery. For these reasons, Orange created Emerginov.

Emerginov is an innovative Telco platform specifically designed for emerging countries, allowing local partners and

public entities to build and host micro-services that citizens can access through the common technology

denominator of mobile phones. The approach is novel, but the thinking is sound: by combining the power of their

global telecom infrastructure with the know-how of the local populace Orange can overcome emerging country

limitations to create telecom solutions that address local needs.

In practice, Emerginov offers an open source platform for development (based on software like Apache, MySQL,

JOnAS, PHP, Mobicents, Asterisk or OpenSIPS etc), as well as online disk storage for hosted applications, services

and associated data –all of which gives local developers the tools and resources they need to take full advantage of

the Nursery. Through Emerginov, local partners and select public entities (such as universities) gain access to the

range of telecom services offered by the Nursery, including IVRs, SMS systems, VOIP infrastructure, Text to Speech

engines, etc. In this way, Emerginov allows local stakeholders to create practical services with just a few lines of

code, without needing to set up and maintain their own systems.

But publicly exposing APIs presents some unique challenges around how they get packaged, secured and managed

for easy consumption.

Enter Layer 7

As envisioned, each partner would typically require only a subset of existing APIs, but that subset may vary for

each partner. Obviously, creating multiple subsets or filtered views of Orange’s APIs (especially as those APIs

changed over time) would quickly become unmanageable.

Orange by the Numbers

• 132.6M mobile customers

• 13.5M internet customers

• Provides consumer services

in 32 countries worldwide

• Supports enterprise

customers in 166 countries

• #3 mobile provider and #2

broadband provider in Europe

• 2009 Revenue = 50.9B Euros

France Telecom: Orange Empowering Emerging Markets through API Publication

France Telecom: Orange Case Study

Copyright © 2011 Layer 7 Technologies Inc. All rights reserved.

trademarks of Layer 7 Technologies Inc. All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners.

The key to making APIs useful to partners and manageable for staff was Layer 7. Layer 7

allowed Orange to create a layer of abstraction or indirection between what functionality they published internally

and what functionality they exposed to partners. Policy

identity and interface level security for the APIs; tracking usage; monitoring interface health;

and updating APIs, etc. – all without breaking client applications.

As a core component of both Orange’s Nursery and Emerginov,

visibility into who is using which API, as well as allowing them to

conformance and track usage for capacity planning.

The Solutions

Since first proposed in December 2009, Emerginov has

initiatives to its credit, including:

• In Mauritius, students have used Emerginov to create a mash

reports. Now, anyone with a GSM

• Most Senegalese don’t have computer access to the information found on typical online discussion

forums like Facebook. Using Emerginov, locals have developed a

allows citizens to post their question

and talking into their phone�

then posted to the forum�. Replies to t

messages�.

The Results

Benefits have been quick to accrue: by

via the Nursery, Orange has created a far more agile IT platform on which to develop new offerings

less cost by reusing/recomposing existing services

Making the Nursery available to local partners in

of revenue-generating services designed

of the barriers that had previously limited their growth in emerging markets.

Layer 7 Technologies Inc. All rights reserved. SecureSpan and the Layer 7 Technologies design mark are

trademarks of Layer 7 Technologies Inc. All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners.

The key to making APIs useful to partners and manageable for staff was Layer 7. Layer 7 SecureSpan XML Gate

to create a layer of abstraction or indirection between what functionality they published internally

and what functionality they exposed to partners. Policy-based controls allowed Orange to define the message,

level security for the APIs; tracking usage; monitoring interface health; managing

without breaking client applications.

As a core component of both Orange’s Nursery and Emerginov, the Layer 7 SecureSpan XML Gatewa

as well as allowing them to extract billing information, validate SLA

conformance and track usage for capacity planning.

09, Emerginov has gained rapid acceptance and now has a number of

In Mauritius, students have used Emerginov to create a mash-up of Google maps and local police traffic

reports. Now, anyone with a GSM-capable phone can access a map of traffic patterns for their area

Most Senegalese don’t have computer access to the information found on typical online discussion

Using Emerginov, locals have developed a new application called “Kisaitoo”

questions to any Facebook forum using their mobile phone

� causes a speech-to-text engine to convert their query to text

. Replies to the posting� are sent back to the original poster

providing developers with secure access to telecom service

created a far more agile IT platform on which to develop new offerings

less cost by reusing/recomposing existing services.

partners in third world countries via Emerginov has resulted

designed “by the people, for the people”. In this way, Orange has overcome many

limited their growth in emerging markets.

SecureSpan and the Layer 7 Technologies design mark are

trademarks of Layer 7 Technologies Inc. All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners. 2

SecureSpan XML Gateway

to create a layer of abstraction or indirection between what functionality they published internally

to define the message,

managing, versioning

Layer 7 SecureSpan XML Gateway gives Orange

extract billing information, validate SLA

has a number of

up of Google maps and local police traffic

traffic patterns for their area.

Most Senegalese don’t have computer access to the information found on typical online discussion

new application called “Kisaitoo” which

mobile phone. Dialing the service

to text�, which is

the original poster as SMS

ecure access to telecom service and data APIs

created a far more agile IT platform on which to develop new offerings faster and at

has resulted in the creation

In this way, Orange has overcome many