Nokia Corporation has announced new platform capabilities and applications for its on-premise Mission Critical Industrial Edge (MXIE) compute solution. To illustrate, these enhancements will enable Nokia MXIE to host applications from different ecosystems. This includes legacy non-cloud native workloads, elevate operational technology (OT) network security, and facilitate application development to advance enterprise digital transformation. 

Recently, Analysys Mason Applications conducted research on the Edge Computing for Private LTE/5G Networks Report. Particularly, it predicted the growing interest among enterprises for implementing new private wireless Industry 4.0 use cases such as autonomous robots and augmented and virtual reality. This will grow the enterprise application market rapidly with investments expected to be around US$6 billion in 2030. 

Encompass Different Ecosystems

With MXIE, Nokia introduced an ecosystem-neutral approach. This allows enterprises to swiftly deploy edge innovations from public cloud, industrial partner cloud, and Industrial Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) onto MXIE to complete their digital transformation. Moreover, as the growing ecosystem drives greater enterprise innovation, Nokia enhances MXIE with new capabilities and partner applications to accelerate this momentum. 

The new Nokia MXIE capability will enable non-cloud native workloads and applications to run in a safe and controlled environment alongside containerized applications. With this, Nokia MXIE can host a huge variety of applications from different ecosystems, including legacy applications most often found in brownfield industrial campuses. 

Nokia MXIE developer portal (MXIE depo) will facilitate application development, providing an enhanced developer experience and tools to enable faster and smoother application onboarding.

The company is expanding the capabilities of the platform by working with two new applications partners. First, is with Siemens MindConnect Software Agent on MXIE helps deliver seamless connectivity between industrial assets and systems. With support for multiple industrial data protocols and formats, Siemens MindConnect Software Agent simplifies the secure transfer of operational data to MindSphere, Siemens industrial IoT as a service solution. This provides industrial IoT capabilities and applications. 

Next, Zscaler Private Access brings Zero Trust Security to MXIE to secure mission-critical Edge workloads, OT, and IIoT systems. Unlike VPN solutions, Zscaler Private Access minimizes the attack surface and risk of lateral threat movement by connecting users, sensors and devices only to the applications they need to do their work.

Accelerates Digital Transformation

Karim Yaici, Senior Analyst, for Analysys Mason, said, “On-premise edge is key to developing and deploying advanced industrial applications. Solutions such as Nokia MXIE will help enterprises accelerate their digital transformation by facilitating access to OT and to foster innovation by providing access to a growing ecosystem of developers and partners.”

Meanwhile, Chris McReynolds, Vice President Global Offerings, Network and Edge Practice for Kyndryl, said, “Our industrial customers are rapidly deploying Nokia private wireless networks to achieve high-performance wireless connectivity. Nokia MXIE is an integral part of the solution which offers a converged compute platform to support the core operation of private wireless networks and host a multitude of OT edge computing applications. By leveraging Nokia MXIE, Kyndryl is helping customers to design, deploy and manage end-to-end industrial use cases, and with that are seeing a quick return on their investments and improvement to their industrial operations.”

Stephan Litjens, Vice President of Enterprise solutions for Nokia, said: “Nokia is committed to simplifying industry digital transformation, allowing companies to access and use their operational technology to meet their productivity, efficiency, safety and sustainability goals.” In addition, Litjens said, “We have always subscribed to open innovation to allow developers to accelerate the growth of industry solutions.”  

 Industry 4.0 applications allow enterprises such as manufacturers, ports, mining, and energy companies to access OT and leverage analytics, mixed reality and more to increase agility. Furthermore, by integrating these capabilities within secure high-performance private wireless networks and the industrial edge, enterprises can benefit from use cases that include widespread automation and help drive process efficiency, flexibility, sustainability, and security.