Nokia and Dell agree partnership on private 5G, cloud networks

LONDON (Reuters) - Nokia and Dell Technologies have agreed a partnership to help deploy so-called private 5G networks and adapt networks to the cloud, they said in a joint statement on Thursday.

Private 5G networks tend to be owned, operated or leased by individual organisations.

Customers of Nokia AirFrame, the telecom equipment maker’s cloud-focused data centre business, will in time migrate to Dell’s PowerEdge servers that are "purpose built for modern telecom network workloads", they said. 

Nokia’s Digital Automation Cloud (NDAC), meanwhile, will become Dell’s preferred private wireless platform for certain enterprise customers’ requirements.

The companies will expand on an existing partnership and work to integrate NDAC with Dell’s NativeEdge software platform, as they look "to advance open network architectures in the telecom ecosystem and private 5G use cases among businesses," they said.

Open network architecture is an approach in computing and communications that allows a product, like a software programme, to be compatible with another product like a mobile phone, despite being made by different vendors.

"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," said Nishant Batra, Nokia’s chief strategy and technology officer.

The companies will also continue joint research and development efforts, including platform and application testing in the Dell Open Telecom Ecosystem Lab, they said.

(Reporting by Olivier Sorgho; Editing by Mark Potter)