SFR Business has announced the strengthening of its partnership with Equinix and Interxion to improve its cloud offer dedicated to businesses. In this sense, the operator will be able to count on 26 new data center in France.
Already engaged in a remote duel as part of the consolidation of the virtual mobile operator (MVNO) market, SFR and Bouygues Telecom are also struggling on the B2B market. Today, SFR Business, the second player in the sector with a market share of 20%, has a comfortable lead over Bouygues Telecom, but the increase in the latter’s actions to attract companies is forcing the operator in the red square to fight back. At the moment, it is mainly on the cloud component that the two groups want to make a difference.
In this context, SFR Business has announced the strengthening of its partnership with the two data center operators Equinix and Interxion to improve its cloud offer dedicated to businesses. Until now, the operator could rely on eight data center (Aubervilliers, Courbevoie, Bordeaux, Rennes, Strasbourg, Val-de-Reuil and Vénissieux) for its Netcenter colocation offer, allowing companies to outsource or extend their IT infrastructure.
From now on, the B2B branch of the French group will be able to extend its shared accommodation spaces in 26 data center close to major French cities such as Bordeaux, Marseille and the Paris region, as well as internationally. Furthermore, “SFR Business will in particular be able to rely on our network of more than 240 Equinix data centers around the world to deploy its new offer and interconnect its ecosystem”, adds Régis Castagné, Managing Director of Equinix France. This improved territorial network is accompanied by an expanded Netcenter offer, with urbanization, migration and relocation services in France or Europe.
This strengthening of SFR Business’ B2B cloud offer comes less than three weeks after Bouygues Telecom announced an offer ofedge computing, so as to make decentralized processing power available to companies. Under the impetus of Cellnex, the operator now operates around ten data center (Paris, Lyon, Nantes, Dijon, Montpellier, Strasbourg, Rouen, Nice, Douai and Toulouse) to offer its cloud services to SMEs, ETIs, large accounts and local authorities.
This is only the first step in the regionalization of infrastructure desired by Bouygues Telecom. The operator has set itself the objective of having around twenty data center over the next three years. According to the firm IDC, spending in theedge computing in Europe will reach 40 billion dollars in 2022, then 64 billion in 2025. The battle for the cloud in telecoms is therefore only beginning, and it will be necessary to be damn efficient, both at SFR and Bouygues Telecom, to compete with Orange Business Services, which outrageously dominates the B2B market with a 70% share.