Leading the telco revolution: Orange and the power of open source

So, let's go from cars to telco, which actually is more interrelated than we think, because for real self-driving, it doesn't work without the telcos and the car manufacturers working together. Philippe, great pleasure to have you here. You have a great and deep knowledge about transformation at Orange and open source. And so, maybe you can share with us what were the things you had to get right so that Orange can transform into the next stage. 

So, first, it's very nice to be with you guys. I think you all know, we are at a very particular moment in time, because regardless of your business and your location, every company that I know basically needs to face two main challenges: how to reinvent themself and how to differentiate themself. And this is, at the moment, where the future of the product, the business model, and the operational model are getting closer and closer. Something that I think is very exciting is that technology appears to be a tangible pivot to support the company to realize their challenges, bringing innovation, business agility and an ability to adapt to the competitive pace. We at Orange are not immune to this trend. We are moving from a very traditional legacy ecosystem to an environment of a technology company. We are moving from a single stack, single vendor tied to hardware, to fully disaggregated and software-based defined environment.  

Open source software, right? 

True. 

Checking. 

Yeah. You're right. We are in this move and Christel Heydemann, our CEO, reinforced this message in our latest plans. So yes, it's about the software, the API, the automation, the cloud, the cloud native, the observability. But you know what? It's not only about technology for a very simple reason. Because it's not only an evolution. We can all buy an evolution if it's only technology. But we are in front of something that is much, much more holistic to manage the whole change. So, it's about the culture, and it's about the people. You can't succeed in our life and in our world without betting on those three core components. So, it's not an evolution. It's definitively a revolution. And you need to earn your revolution if you want to have the full benefits of it. And of course, Thomas, open source is a pillar of this transformation. 

If there's one thing that I trust the French with, it's doing a revolution and strikes. So, we talked about defense, offense. I mean, we all have mobile phones, and one thing that we hate is losing coverage. A big part of your service to your customer is defense, making sure that the network's stable even when there are many people in the room. So how do you combine defense and offense at the same time? 

I don't know any kind of sport that on the long-lasting you're able to win only with offense. It's always a good mix of defense and offense. You can win some games, but you can't win a championship. So, when it's about the offense and integrating innovation, I think that we are at a very interesting converging moment. Basically, what I can observe is that whether you are in digital, in IT, in network, in telco, all those core foundations are converging toward the same environment where it's software based, API based, cloud native enabled. And in this whole space, I would say we have one super player, and the name of this player is definitively open source that unlocks a lot of potential. 

This is what I was going to ask you. So, you’re doing amazing things. We know that any telco, specifically Orange, is transforming from offering the basic network capabilities to much more higher-level services. And you’ve done some things in a very smart way, actually. You didn’t try to do it on your own. You created a team around you, even with competitors. So, if you can share a little bit about your open source initiative. 

So, for us, open source, basically, it's three things. The first one is about innovation. The second one is about the owning model. And the last one is about collaboration. Innovation is quite simple. I don't know a tech company able to jump in and define alone a standard. It's absolutely impossible. And what we are observing, whether it is in the software, in cloud native, in the machine learning space, companies like you that may face direct competitors, you decide to join forces and to build the core foundation, and then you differentiate yourself, I would say, beyond this ecosystem. But I think that it's super important to catch that there is no better place for innovation than in open source.  

The second point that is very important for me, as well, is the owning model and the journey you want to propose to your employees and to your teammates. For me, when you are entering into an open source journey, it's a journey of doer; it's a journey of learners. And we are at a moment where the competition is so strong that if you do not have your own intellectual property by doing things that make you different on your core business, it's very, very difficult to compete on the long run. 

And the third and last one, I think it's the way to do collaboration. I would say a company like mine, a few years back, when you want to work with partners, with competitors, with peers, the only thing that we were able to do was a joint venture, so a binding legal stuff that was complicated to maneuver (if I can say). And we have a very nice example. The Sylva project is the first Linux Foundation Europe-hosted project. So, the idea behind Sylva is to develop an industrial grade, cloud native telco stack. We managed this with European operator peers, plus Nokia and Ericsson, 18 months ago in an exploratory mode. I would say in a closed mode. And we decided to open source the project last November. 

And the idea is definitively to manage three things: to define a framework with all the requirements that we as network vendors and telecom operators need to build our new stuff. The second one is to have a reference implementation because in open source, tell me if I’m wrong, but I don’t know a successful project without a reference implementation. It’s absolutely mandatory. 

It starts with the code. Unlike standards in the past, we’re starting with specifications and then the code was coming next. Now it’s coming with the code first. 

Exactly. And the last part is about the validation framework. Something that is very important is that for all those telecom players, we are defining this core infrastructure to run basically 5G, Open RAN [Open Radio Access Network] and edge services. And you were part of this journey. We worked together because we defined, and we committed code, to Sylva on Cluster API to bootstrap Kubernetes infrastructure on a bare-metal environment. But it's not only about Sylva project. It's, as well, what we inside Orange, we are doing with you from SUSE and in particular with Rancher. You are presenting more than 15 different entities today. We have several 100s of Rancher clusters live. And something that is very interesting is that what you are doing on immutable operating system and on security with NeuVector is very exciting for us. And we already have one of our enterprise market entities who deploy NeuVector for security coverage. So, I think it's perhaps a recent and a nascent partnership, but that's settled very nicely. 

Thank you for that. We are very proud of being part of the Sylva project and to contribute together for such a successful open source technology. 

And Philippe, what I really admire about your initiative is that you apparently have discovered that although you're competing with many of the partners which you embark in Sylva, you agreed on a common stack which would help all of you; and then each of you individually can focus on differentiating topics. You didn't try to build everything from A to Z by yourself, which I believe is also a learning to be made by more industries. And I'm thinking about automotive where every auto company is trying to create their own operating system these days. I'm sure they will follow soon the example of what you're saying and going, ‘There's a layer which doesn't differentiate us, but it's hard to build, so let's do it together.’ 

And something, Ivo, if I may, that is very important. If Sylva is born in the telco industry, it's absolutely not bound in the telco industry. If you have a topic, for instance, in space, aerospace, industry or manufacturing, and you need infrastructure to carry over your edge services, for instance, and if you want to use bare metal and bet on what the SUSE team has committed with us, honestly, it's really, really open. We are at a time of the project where we are entering as a founded project at Linux Foundation Europe. So it means that we are really entering in the next stage in terms of maturity. And, of course, we are very welcoming all over in the industry, outside the telco ecosystem, because I truly believe that there is room for everyone who has cases about the edge, Open RAN and 5G. 

Great example of a community at work happening right here at SUSECON 23 in Munich. Thank you so much.