Orange Business Services has acquired French fleet management and vehicle tracking solutions company Ocean for an undisclosed amount. Ocean currently manages 45,000 vehicles for 2,000 corporate clients. It will become an operational unit of Orange Applications for Business, OBS’s digital services division specializing in connected objects, customer experience digitisation, big data and data analytics. OBS aims to support companies’ digital transformation, which has the IoT and M2M as key drivers.
By integrating Ocean’s operations in its own activities, Orange Business Services is creating a new leader on the French and European markets with over 100,000 managed vehicles. This acquisition supports a strong growth ambition on the European market and will leverage advanced expertise and technologies to accelerate the development of new solutions for connected objects.
The operator cites a forecast that Europe will have a potential market of 35 million company vehicles by 2018, more than 20 percent of which will have a fleet management system.
The merger of Orange’s Fleet Management activities launched in 2005 with dedicated Machine-to-Machine (M2M) offers and managing today over 60,000 vehicles and Ocean gives rise to a new industry leader in the European market. The new entity will bring together 110 employees, including a technical and development team of over 40 experts, and will be led by Jacques Riviere, the current President of Ocean.
Fleet management and vehicle tracking is now one of the most advanced sectors in the field of M2M and connected objects, and one of the pillars of the Orange Group’s growth strategy. By 2018, Europe will represent a potential market of 35 million company vehicles, among which more than 20% will be equipped with a fleet management solution.