Nokia, Microsoft partner to enhance performance with MXIE platform

Nokia has announced plans to integrate Microsoft Azure Arc capabilities into the Nokia MX Industrial Edge (MXIE) platform, unlocking the potential of mission critical applications for Industry 4.0 use cases. Through the integration, Nokia MXIE and private wireless solution customers have seamless access to the full Azure ecosystem offering on MXIE.

Aimed to support industries including automotive, manufacturing, energy, logistics and government, the powerful combination will enable use cases by allowing customers to run applications in the traditional cloud, as well as directly on their premises. Collaboration in these areas will provide numerous benefits such as increasing worker safety through AI and automation, while decreasing the amount of needed backhaul with local data processing.

Microsoft Azure Arc offers a simple way to deploy and manage Azure applications on-premise with multi-cloud resources, such as virtual or physical servers and Kubernetes clusters. It simplifies governance and management by delivering a consistent multi-cloud and on-premise management platform.

The Nokia MXIE is a future-ready, high-capacity and highly-resilient as-a-service OT on-premise edge solution that accelerates the digital transformation of operational technology (OT), and is powered with 4.9/LTE and 5G connectivity provided by the Nokia Digital Automation Cloud (DAC).

Microsoft Azure Arc running on Nokia MXIE provides enterprises with added access to Azure capabilities while benefiting from private wireless connected assets’ real-time data and on-premise, highly-resilient OT-centric edge processing.

Stephan Litjens, Vice President, Nokia Enterprise Solutions, said: “We have built a leadership position with our private wireless networks solution and MX Industrial Edge platform in large part by working with our valued partners. Our extended collaboration with Microsoft will enable and enhance the performance of Industry 4.0 mission critical applications allowing our customers to tap into Microsoft Azure Arc in the cloud and on the customer premise’s edge.”

Keith Sutton, CTO, Telco Service Line at Microsoft said: “Nokia is an established leader in fully integrated industrial edge and private wireless solutions to provide features and automated management tools that accelerate OT digitalization. With Microsoft Azure Arc, a wide ecosystem of applications, and our long standing work with Nokia, we can provide AI-powered insights and identify solutions to workflow issues for mission critical Industry 4.0 applications running at the edge.”

Nokia has deployed mission-critical networks to more than 2,200 leading enterprise customers in the transport, energy, large enterprise, manufacturing, webscale and public sector segments around the globe. It has also extended its expertise to more than 450 large private wireless customers worldwide across an array of sectors, and has been cited by numerous industry analysts as the leading provider of private wireless networking worldwide.