Nokia Corporation and Kyndryl Inc. have forged a global network and edge computing alliance aimed at helping enterprises accelerate their digital transformations. In short, the alliance makes sure customers will be able to make use of industrial-grade LTE and 5G private wireless networking.

The partnership builds on a successful private wireless connectivity project that yielded an innovative solution. Hence, this will combine Nokia Digital Automation Cloud (DAC) application platform with Kyndryl’s consulting and managed services.

Accordingly, the solution will support Industry 4.0, which is transforming how companies manufacture and distribute their products. Specifically, it will make use of IoT, cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and other advances to their environments and operations.

Manufacturing as Primary Segment

The Nokia and Kindryl alliance has already resulted in private LTE and 5G real world deployments and several proof-of-concept (PoC) applications for Dow Inc. That is, it was able to support Industry 4.0-enabled worker safety and collaboration, asset tracking, and other capabilities. It makes use of a blueprint that it plans to expand and deploy across its sites worldwide.

Kyndryl and Nokia share a vision that private wireless networking over both LTE and 5G will enable new levels of operational flexibility and adaptability across a wide range of asset-intensive industries, with manufacturing as a primary market segment.

Paul Savill, Global Practice Leader of Network and Edge computing for Kyndryl said enterprises find new ways to digitally transform. As such, they need to harness 5G and edge computing.

“By collaborating with Nokia, we’re taking another step forward in helping our customers unlock the power of LTE and 5G through a secure, private environment that helps them deliver tailored enterprise-grade edge solutions that drive new value for their bottom lines and next gen customer experiences,” said Savill.

To illustrate, the collaboration will give Kyndryl and Nokia address the marketplace opportunities that already utilize the strong industrial ecosystem available now with LTE. Consequently, this will lead to significant 5G enhancements in future 3GPP releases with existing Nokia DAC 5G stand alone-ready private wireless solutions.

Other Undertakings

Chris Johnson, head of the Global Enterprise Business at Nokia, added the partnership will enable even more organizations to transform their operations, accelerate their digitalization journey and reap the benefits of Industry 4.0.

Nokia DAC is a digitization service platform featuring high-performance, industrial-grade private wireless connectivity and edge computing. In addition, it strengthens the company’s global footprint, industry expertise and end-to-end customer solutions, from ideation to implementation and management.

Kyndryl and Nokia also plan to explore and develop new, integrated solutions and services. This encompass Edge Cloud, IP networking, Optics, Fixed Access, 4G and 5G Core and Network Operations software technologies that can address mission-critical, industrial-grade wireless networking to capitalize digitization and automation.

Asset-intensive industries are adopting smart and autonomous systems fueled by data and machine learning to improve agility, productivity, and efficiency. Particularly, private wireless connectivity is a key enabler to adding new data sources and analytics layers, for real-time process management, and to facilitate automation, robotics, AI, augmented and virtual reality use cases.