Nokia Oyj (NOK) has landed new partnerships with Amazon.com Inc's (AMZN) Amazon Web Services (AWS), Alphabet Inc's (GOOG/GOOGL) Google Cloud and Microsoft Corp (MSFT) for use of Nokia’s cloud technology.
What Happened
Nokia on Monday announced AWS, Google and Microsoft plan to utilize Nokia’s Radio Access Network (RAN), Open RAN, Cloud RAN (vRAN) and edge technology. The partnerships will advance Nokia’s 4G and 5G portfolios.
Nokia’s partnership with AWS will have the companies working together developing a proof of concept through researching the use of Nokia’s cloud RAN (vRAN) and Open RAN technologies. The project will support Nokia’s 5G deployments and assist it in developing new use cases.
“The initiative will see engineering teams from both companies research how the combination of Nokia’s RAN (Radio Access Network), Open RAN, Cloud RAN and edge solutions can operate seamlessly with AWS Outposts,” the Nokia press release noted.
The collaboration will cover three areas:
- The onboarding and validating of Nokia’s 5G vDU (virtualized distributed unit) on AWS outposts.
- Nokia’s 5G virtualized centralized unit will be tested across AWS Outposts and AWS Local Zones using Amazon EKS as a cloud native deployment.
- A focus on the development the proof of concept “for an end-to-end solution with Nokia’s 5G Cloud RAN and 5G standalone Core network running on AWS, where end enterprise users can leverage 5G for use cases such as an industrial application,” the press release stated.
Meanwhile, Nokia has partnered with Google to create new 5G cloud-based radio solutions. “The two companies will collaborate on joint solutions combining Nokia’s Radio Access Network (RAN), Open RAN, Cloud RAN (vRAN) and edge cloud technologies, with Google’s edge computing platform and applications ecosystem,” wrote Nokia in the press release.
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The project will see Nokia’s Nokia’s 5G vDU (virtualized distributed unit) and 5G vCU (virtualized centralized unit) tested on Google’s edge computing platform, as well as Nokia’s 5G standalone network with vCU and 5G core tested on Google’s Cloud Anthos platform.
Nokia’s partnership with Microsoft is aimed to create 4G and 5G private wireless use cases for Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.
“The collaboration will combine Nokia’s Cloud RAN (vRAN) technologies with Microsoft Azure cloud-based services and developer ecosystem to drive end-user functionality via new business cases,” Nokia noted in the press release.
The collaboration with Microsoft will take place in three stages:
- Nokia will integrate its mobile solutions with Azure Private Edge Zone. This is intended to increase the performance of Microsoft’s Azure ecosystem.
- Nokia’s 5G RAN will be integrated with Microsoft’s Azure 4G/5G core to show the two products can work together.
- The companies will explore ways Microsoft can incorporate the Nokia Airframe Open Edge server as part of Microsoft’s telco edge strategy.
What’s Next
Nokia’s collaborations with the three tech giants will help further the companies' digital transformations by offering customers the latest 4G and 5G technology.
For Nokia, the collaborations will prove its technology and software solutions increase the performance of other cloud computing services and provide a better customer experience.
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