Nokia integrates Microsoft Azure Arc capabilities into MXIE platform

Nokia has strengthened its long-standing partnership with Microsoft to enhance the performance of critical Industry 4.0 use cases. The Finnish firm will integrate Microsoft Azure Arc capabilities into the Nokia MX Industrial Edge (MXIE) platform, proving customers access to the full Azure ecosystem offering on MXIE.

Nokia MXIE is a future-ready on-premises edge solution that can accelerate the digital transformation of your operational technology (OT) and is powered with 4.9/LTE and 5G connectivity provided by the Nokia Digital Automation Cloud (DAC). The high-capacity solution offers extreme resilience and reliability through an end-to-end high availability architecture and supports geographical redundancy to ensure business continuity.

"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," said Stephan Litjens, Vice President, Nokia Enterprise Solutions.

Nokia said that the integration of MXIE with Azure Arc will enable Industry 4.0 use cases by allowing customers to run applications in the traditional cloud, as well as directly on their premises. It will support industries including automotive, manufacturing, energy, logistics and government.

Azure Arc running on 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, the Finnish network equipment maker said in a media release on Monday.

Commenting on this partnership, 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."