Dell and Nokia have extended their strategic partnership in a move that aims to advance open network architectures in the telecom ecosystem and private 5G for businesses.
The agreement will see the pair share their respective expertise and solutions, including Dell’s infrastructure offerings and Nokia’s private wireless connectivity capabilities.
Dell will become Nokia’s preferred infrastructure partner for its AirFrame servers, with Nokia to offer Dell technology as part of its telecom cloud deployments.
The companies said they will gradually help transition existing AirFrame customers to Dell’s infrastructure portfolio, which includes the tech firm’s PowerEdge servers for modern telecom network workloads.
In the other direction, Dell will pair Nokia’s Digital Automation Cloud (NDAC) private wireless solution with its edge operations software platform, NativeEdge, in a move it said will provide customers with a comprehensive and scalable solution for enterprise use cases at the edge.
“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’s 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.”
In addition to the immediate developments, Dell and Nokia said they also plan to collaborate on application and platform testing in the Dell Open Telecom Ecosystem Lab, as well as certify workloads on Dell Telecom Infrastructure Blocks that support Nokia Cloud offerings.
The pair will also continue to collaborate on OEM engagements, they added.
Nishant Batra, Nokia’s chief strategy and technology officer, said the expanded collaboration efforts will ensure that both companies are more flexible and better equipped to meet customer’s future 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,” he explained.
“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.”
