- Orange Business has appointed Rob Willcock as CEO International effective March 1
- Willcock is replacing Kristof Symons who's leaving after a 17-year career across the organization
- Willcock was previously President for the Americas and Managing Director for the UK and Ireland
Orange Business announced a new CEO just days ahead of Mobile World Congress. Rob Willcock, now CEO International for the organization, is replacing Kristof Symons who's leaving after a 17-year career across the organization.
According to the announcement, his goals are to "reinforce the company’s position as a leading network and digital integrator, and a trusted partner for multinational and large national customers outside France."
Building on his successful leadership and business transformation track record, his two key priorities will be business development and customer service excellence, the company stated.
Willcock was previously President of the Americas for five years and Managing Director for the UK and Ireland for three years.
During that time Orange Business undertook several major transformation initiatives including a global SD-WAN deployment for Sony which consolidated and modernized its global communications infrastructure, spanning 500 locations in over 50 countries.
Under his leadership, Orange Business also implemented an all-digital communications platform for Mondelēz which streamlined communication, eliminated legacy PBX systems and enabled advanced analytics and automation. Orange developed an intelligent, automated next-generation, secure, and scalable network for Mars, which integrated SD-WAN and security solutions to improve business application performance.
His tenure also included the six-year, $294 million SD-WAN contract for Siemens which included 1,500 sites, demonstrating its capability in large-scale enterprise networking solutions. He also worked to expand the division's cloud, IoT, and cybersecurity services, launching various managed services for global enterprises.
Quick take
Our take is that with Willcock at the helm, Orange Business will move to expand SD-WAN deals further and branch out into private 5G networks, which we hope to hear more about at Mobile World Congress.
Fierce reached out to Orange Business for comments but had not received a reply as of press time. We will update this story should we receive additional details.
Stay up to date on all the news from Mobile World Congress with Fierce Network and FNTV.