The innovation area  will concentrate great part of the efforts to Orange Business Services during 2008. The corporate communications company France Telecom, which adds 3,750 companies that are customers throughout the world, will invest € 1 billion in R & D throughout its 18 laboratories this year. According to the company CEO, Barbara Dalibard, they will bet on "cross-fertilization": developments designed for the individual consumer market and later translated into improvements to the business environment, and vice versa.

"These environments feed off each other, for example, Fiber to the Home (FTTH) will be an interesting tool to apply in the corporate market," said the executive. Another case is Business Everywhere, a tool developed by Orange that enables your mobile employees use their usual business applications from virtually anywhere - with the same simplicity. This solution, which already has 876 thousand subscribers around the world and is expected to reach one million by the end of this year, has its equivalent in the world of individual users called Internet Everywhere.

"Orange Business Services' goal is to capture innovation where it is generated, whether in Japan or China, where the market for handsets is abundant, or in El Cairo, where one of our R & D laboratories operate with 1,500 employees" said Dalibard. The research has three main tasks: to participate in the company’s innovation, understand market formulations and obtain development ideas in hands of clients, due to that it forms part of their needs.

One of the key agreements between Orange Business Services to develop innovations is with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), located in Boston, near a laboratory owned  by  the company with French origin -- another works in San Francisco.

France Telecom was one of the founding sponsors of this center, which focuses its interest in four R & D areas: productivity, marketing, services and health. David Verrill, Executive Director of MIT, said to Convergencialatina that "in 2008, the three key innovations will be how to increase productivity through technology and the assimilation of information via the Internet and health ".

Informatics solutions for the health market are a new line of business for France Telecom, and Verrill underlined its potential based on two reasons: "The market is huge, and that it is bankrupt."

The latest technological creations of Orange Business Services were presented in Orange Labs Boston, which has been operational since 2002. Frank Bowman, CEO of this center, explained that the lab work is aimed at mobile and mobility, with the aim of using the same applications on all screens, from the TV to the mobile phone and computer, and achieve mobility in all those areas.

Moreover, Mobile Widgets are mini applications for Internet that can be used on mobile phones. These devices, suitable for individual users as well as equipment used at work, opens opportunities for Internet developers rather than equipment programmers. In Orange Labs Boston the "Locus" or "Locate Us" was created, which is not marketed yet, through this application any call or SMS exchange from a cell to another triggers Google Maps, locating the listener instantly on a map that adjusts to the size of the mobile screen.

Ed Mitukiewicz, Research Center director, said that "the great challenge to promote the development of these mobile applications is to have more useful content for a user who is on the move. In general, applications that are offered ignore the requirements of mobile access and assume that the receive mode is similar to that of any computer with Internet, where the experience of consuming content from the cell is completely different.

In the presentation the E-Paper was also introduced, a new deployment with high contrast similar to a plain paper, low consumption and light weight. This platform will help develop all sorts of applications, ranging from media guides and interactive digital medical records for hospitals, up to "smart" menus and more secure personal documents.

E-Paper is in line with the “background” that  all operations of Orange Business Services will have during 2008: sustainability for the environment. Axel Haentjens, Brand and External Communications Marketing VP, explained that thanks to the concept of "Green IT" behind all laboratory innovations, they hope to reduce the number of servers by 40% in 2010. In this regard, he also stated that during 2007, carbon dioxide emissions were reduced by more than 200 tons and the aim is to reduce them by 20% by 2020