When Orange OpenTech 2025 wrapped up with the promise of “expanding business capabilities,” it wasn’t a slogan – it was a signal. Orange Business is accelerating its shift from a conventional telecom operator to a digital infrastructure company built around on-demand networks, embedded AI, and edge-scale experimentation. At YourNewsClub, we see a rare inflection point: the classic telco model is giving way to an architecture where the network becomes a computational layer and services turn into modular building blocks for enterprise transformation.
At the center of this evolution stands the Evolution Platform – Orange’s flagship NaaS environment, launched commercially in early 2025 and already adopted by more than 300 enterprise customers. Its attraction is simple: it unifies network virtualization, cloud connectivity and hybrid access into a single control surface where changes deploy in seconds. Dynamic bandwidth allocation, cost governance and real-time carbon-emission monitoring make the platform a practical tool for companies scaling without heavy capex. As YourNewsClub analyst Jessica Larn, a specialist in macro-tech policy, notes: “Once networks become on-demand products, they turn into instruments of infrastructural pressure – decisions that reshape economic and political behavior as much as they reshape compute.”
Building on this momentum, Orange unveiled a new addition: VPN-as-a-Service. It allows third-party SD-WAN gateways to connect to Orange’s On Demand Cloud Connect using a virtual private network that launches with a single click and becomes operational within seconds. For enterprises operating across multi-cloud environments, VPNaaS may become a universal adapter that simplifies complex architectures.
The company is pushing just as aggressively into artificial intelligence. Live Intelligence – a hybrid platform blending GenAI and agentic systems – is now available to governments and corporations across the GCC region, with broader rollout underway. A new enterprise interface will follow next year, alongside carbon-impact monitoring for every AI query. In markets where ESG metrics have real economic weight, this feature could become a strategic differentiator.
Orange’s R&D division also showcased one of the event’s most forward-leaning concepts: X-WAN, positioned as the next evolutionary step beyond SD-WAN. With AI-driven traffic management, multi-site flexibility and deep multi-cloud integrations centered on the Evolution Platform, X-WAN hints at a future in which network intelligence shifts closer to the user. Supporting the concept is a surprisingly compact customer-premises device – no larger than a home Wi-Fi router – equipped with an integrated GPU. If successful, it could make local LLM training and edge compute viable for companies of any size, reducing latency and enhancing security.
At YourNewsClub, we interpret these moves as Orange’s attempt to occupy a strategic space between hyperscalers and legacy telcos, constructing its own digital geography of compute and connectivity. As YourNewsClub analyst Owen Radner, who studies digital-era infrastructure as a new form of energy corridor, explains: “In a world where power flows through networks the way goods flow through logistics, the winners are those who control the routes of data and computation.” Orange is clearly positioning itself for that contest.
All signs point to this: Orange is betting on a future where networks, AI and edge infrastructure merge into a single operational ecosystem. The challenges remain substantial – from pressure by hyperscale cloud providers to the difficulty of maintaining reliability during rapid innovation cycles. We recommend that enterprises evaluate Evolution Platform and Live Intelligence as early-entry tools into next-generation architecture: flexible, resilient and cost-aware. For organizations operating in multi-cloud or high-security environments, Orange offers an unusual blend of sovereignty, speed and scalability.
If Orange manages to maintain its innovation pace while preserving execution quality, it won’t just adapt to the AI era – it may become one of its foundational infrastructure anchors, a development that Your News Club views as increasingly plausible given current industry dynamics.