Dell, Nokia Extend Cloud, 5G Team-Up

Dell Technologies and Nokia are extending an existing strategic partnership between the companies under which they are using each other’s expertise and technologies for telecom sector cloud deployments and private 5G wireless services.

The partnership, the companies said on Feb. 15, aims to “advance open network architectures in the telecom ecosystem and private 5G use cases among businesses.”

Extension of the partnership agreement features three key points.

First, Nokia will adopt Dell Technologies as its preferred infrastructure partner for Nokia AirFrame servers and offer “Dell’s technology as the infrastructure of choice for telecom cloud deployments.”

“Nokia and Dell will help transition existing AirFrame customers over time to Dell’s broad infrastructure portfolio, including Dell PowerEdge servers, purpose built for modern telecom network workloads from core to edge to RAN,” the companies said.

Second, Nokia’s Digital Automation Cloud (NDAC) private wireless solution will become Dell’s preferred private wireless platform for enterprise customers’ edge use cases. The companies said they will “work together to integrate Nokia’s NDAC solution with Dell NativeEdge, the edge operations software platform, to provide a comprehensive, scalable solution for enterprises.”

And third, both companies will continue their joint research and development efforts and platform and application testing in the Dell Open Telecom Ecosystem Lab.

Through that work, the companies said they plan to “certify workloads on Dell Telecom Infrastructure Blocks that support Nokia Cloud offerings, while also continuing to collaborate on OEM engagements.”

“Through our collaboration, Nokia and Dell Technologies will harness each company’s expertise and expanded distribution to simply and quickly scale modern telecom networks and private 5G use cases,” commented Dennis Hoffman, senior vice president and general manager at Dell Technologies’ Telecom Systems Business.

“With our decades of digital transformation experience, we’re ready to work together with Nokia’s customers to continue their network cloud transformation journey on the industry’s top selling compute platform,” he said.

Nishant Batra, chief strategy and technology officer at Nokia, said the “strategic partnership will make both companies more flexible and able to better address future customer needs.”

“Dell’s digital transformation expertise and global scale, services and support will provide a seamless transition option for Nokia AirFrame customers, and Nokia’s vast experience in the design, deployment, and operation of high-performance public and private mobile networks will provide Dell’s customers with a comprehensive, scalable private wireless solution,” Batra said.

“In line with our technology strategy, our continued collaboration with Dell will help address the future needs of our customers brought on by the increasing demands on networks and provide solutions to help communications service providers scale modern networks to the cloud,” the Nokia official said.