Richard van Wageningen
President of Orange Business Europe; delivered public sector keynote at Sovereign Tech Europe summit Brussels 2026.
Last refreshed: 23 April 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Will European governments actually switch procurement to Orange and European cloud, or just talk about it?
Timeline for Richard van Wageningen
Mentioned in: Brussels sovereignty summit opens without European AI builders
European Tech Sovereignty- What is Orange Business and how does it fit into European cloud sovereignty?
- Orange Business is the enterprise services division of Orange Group, the French telco partially owned by the French state. It provides managed cloud, connectivity, and IT services to European enterprises and public sector clients, making it a direct beneficiary of EU sovereignty procurement frameworks favouring European providers.Source: Orange Business / Sovereign Tech Europe programme
Background
Richard van Wageningen is President of Orange Business for Europe, the enterprise services division of Orange, the French multinational telecommunications group. He delivers the thematic keynote for Session 2, titled "The Role of European Technology in the Public Sector", at the inaugural Sovereign Tech Europe summit in Brussels on 23 April 2026 .
Orange Business is one of Europe's largest managed services and cloud connectivity providers, with significant enterprise and public sector contracts across EU member states. As the enterprise division of a French state-part-owned telco, Orange Business occupies a distinctive position in the European sovereignty debate: it is simultaneously a potential beneficiary of sovereignty procurement frameworks and a company whose French state shareholder gives it different political positioning than purely private cloud providers.
Van Wageningen's keynote on technology in the public sector addresses the core commercial question for European cloud providers: whether EU sovereignty frameworks will translate into procurement decisions that shift workloads from US hyperscalers to European alternatives. The €180m sovereign cloud framework awarded days earlier — which Orange Business or its consortium partners might compete in extending — is exactly the kind of instrument his keynote is designed to address .
