Platforming is not merely a technical strategy; it is a philosophy for creating value. It completely reframes siloed tools into a shared, scalable ecosystem, powering organizations to evolve faster, reuse what works and continuously enrich digital experiences.
Platforming drives this transformation by standardizing core capabilities that teams can build upon rather than getting caught in the repetition trap. Capabilities created once can be applied across multiple use cases and enhanced as projects mature.
Building scalable platforms that connect partners, services and users to drive innovation and growth.
This shared baselayer eliminates technical conflicts, accelerating delivery while maintaining consistency and quality. The result is a continuous cycle of improvement, enabling digital experiences to evolve rapidly in response to changing customer demands and technological advancements. One that is central to the Orange innovation roadmap.
Speaking at OpenTech 2025, Philippe Lucas, EVP Partnerships & Devices at Orange said platforms are of vital importance to the Group: “Orange is composed of twenty-five countries, and we do everything differently in the different countries. Platforming will help us to develop things once, run everywhere, but also take into account local aspects,” he says.
A shared baselayer
For example, Max it is a “super-app” for the Middle East and Africa for banking, ecommerce, games and mobile account management. Features include number authentication, billing, content and games centre. Its base layer enables the development of mini and localized apps in different languages within a week.
Orange is undoubtedly on trend. Analyst firm IDC predicts that by 2029, 30% of global IT services will be delivered as modular, platform-enabled products. This will be driven by demand for smart self-directed AI to automatically manage and connect different digital services and tools for more complex tasks.[1]
Dealing with the pace of change
Traditional long-term planning is disappearing. Today, organizations require faster, more agile strategies to adapt to new technologies in dynamic marketplaces quickly.
Platforming is also critical to the future of telcos like Orange in maintaining their relevance – enabling a redefinition from connectivity providers to agile digital platforms. With a platform approach, they can launch services more quickly, integrate technologies, and scale operations, transforming networks into flexible, revenue-generating ecosystems.
“Platforming makes a lot of sense for a telco in the scaling journey,” explains Isabelle Casado, Europe Strategy & Transformation Director, at Orange. “Because we have access to the network, we are used to carrier-grade supervision, we know how to manage data and security, and we have the trust of our customers.”
Strategic mutualization of key drivers at scale
Casado explains that leveraging at scale and mutualizing in all its markets are central to the Orange vision. “We want to scale to improve the top line while providing high standards of customer experience. We want to scale to be more competitive by mutualizing our expertise, our assets, our best practices and improving processes and to reduce cost,” she says.
“Customers are asking more and more from us in terms of perfect quality of services, products with AI inside and innovative and state-of-the-art digital experiences,” adds Paul Carrasco, EVP Platforming Strategy, Orange. On these, Orange needs to deliver.
This underscores the importance of platforming in retaining the Orange leadership position in “a high-tech, cost-intensive, and fast-moving digital economy,” Carrasco maintains.
Platforming will be leveraged alongside the Group’s scaling capabilities, including its global footprint and 300 million customers, which exceeds the combined customer base of the three major mobile operators in the US.
Orange believes ‘open innovation’ is the way forward
Orange is adopting an open innovation strategy, platforming a diverse ecosystem of external partners, which opens up to a broader range of ideas, faster development cycles, and the creation of new solutions that go beyond its in-house vision.
The Group is opening up core assets to external partners to develop their own products. The Orange LiveNet business unit, for example, has exposed the company’s telco APIs to external developers, allowing them to use the Orange network as a programmable platform. The Orange Prpl gateway can host and run applications created by partners, for example. Consumers will be able to download apps onto their home gateway, just as they do on smartphones, for applications such as cybersecurity.
The future will be built on platforms
Philipp Schulte, CEO of Giesecke & Devrient Mobile Security, is confident that platforming is the future direction: “Your business is a platform, or it is going to be disrupted by one,” he says.
The company provides Orange with digital eSIMs, supported by a single platform across the twenty-five countries in which Orange operates.
The platform enables every single country to be independent or a tenant of the platform, so that if one country is disrupted, it does not impact the others. “We want to follow this platforming model in a much more recurring way,” says Lucas. “It is very easy to scale, correct, and update and upgrade all the countries at once”.
Orange has great ambitions for platforming
Platforming will provide a unified development framework for the entire portfolio of Orange solutions and services. “Once we have this common foundation, we are convinced this will help us to build these new experiences and personalize them for the future,” comments Carrasco. “It allows us to rapidly scale our successes at Group level across countries”.
Platforming will also enable Orange to undertake positive and impactful consolidation, while scaling and leveraging the Group’s skills to drive growth. “If we integrate a new country into the Orange family instantly, they will have the ability to access all these platforms and new offers ready to deploy,” explains Carrasco.
To conclude, platforming is a core strategic transformation for Orange to evolve from a traditional telco into a platform-driven network and digital integrator. One that will provide seamless, agile and trusted on-demand secure solutions. “When technology disappears into the background, value appears in the foreground. There is fantastic potential here to drive market innovation,” wraps up Lucas.
[1] https://www.idc.com/resource-center/blog/three-forces-shaping-the-future-of-it-leaderships/
