To offer cloud services, four Companies namely, Orange Business Services, Cisco, EMC and VMware have entered an alliance, called Flexible 4 Business.

As per the agreement made between the Companies through the alliance, a private cloud will be provided to the customers so that they can either install it on their sites or on Orange Business Services's (OBS) network. The alliance will also offer services like data backup, security and unified communications services

A coalition known as Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) is already there in place, a collaborative effort of Cisco, EMC and VMware that provides Vblock infrastructure services and products to businesses.

For the Flexible 4 Business, Vblock will serve as the basis for the private cloud business. The security and unified communication services will be provided by Cisco.

Jean-Yves Pronier, EMC France's Marketing Director told ZDNet UK, "It is a pure cloud model, which means you can address the market or company or users and say that this is a cloud".

OBS will serve as a platform for service-level agreements (SLAs) that are to be provided to Flexible 4 Business customers, as told by Alex Rigaldo, Head of cloud for OBS. Either OBS's network or the customers' own datacenter will be employed for private cloud offering.