Hélène Auriol Potier has been appointed Executive Vice President, International at Orange Business Services, to focus on growth areas for the company including network virtualisation/SD-WAN, cyber defence, cloud, IOT and analytics.

According to a statement by the company, Auriol Potier joins Orange from Microsoft where she spent ten years, most recently as General Manager, Artificial Intelligence, Western Europe.

The newly appointed executive VP is expected to help cement Orange Business Services' growth in markets including cloud services and cybersecurity.

The company aims to secure and source 50% of cloud revenue outside of France by 2022.

"This has also been driven by key acquisitions in the industry, including Basefarm, and the opening of new data centres in Amsterdam and Atlanta," reads the company's statement.

Orange Business Services suggests that 60% of the world's data is expected to come from enterprises in 2025 (versus 30% today), and the company is busy transforming its core service portfolio, including network services with the development of its software defined network (SDN)-based offerings, including Flexible SD-WAN.

Of the appointment Helmut Reisinger, CEO, Orange Business Services, said, "Hélène's deep knowledge of B2B customer needs, as well as her expertise in digital technologies will help our customers shape their innovation and is a perfect match with our ambition to become a leader in a new global, data-driven ecosystem where people, objects and business processes are all connected both inside and outside the company. This is what we envision as the 'Internet of Enterprises'".

Reisinger has previously posted that to utilise data effectively, organisations need to be able to understand the proliferating data at their fingertips, and how to analyse and manage it. Each step in a company's digital journey is equally important to ensure that data ultimately produces a tangible business impact and the intended business growth, he said.

"Data-driven transformation strategies are essential for the survival of every business in this digital era, an era that is unleashing unprecedented levels of human creativity. The three paths that I have outlined can be taken either one after the other or all at once. There is no magic formula; it depends on many factors, such as company size and sector type. But in my view, these are the approaches that work best, that will give your strategies the greatest chance of success."