Kyndryl and Nokia enter network and edge computing alliance

Kyndryl and Nokia have announced a global network and edge computing alliance, aimed at helping enterprise customers accelerate digital transformations with LTE and 5G private wireless networking solutions.

The partnership builds on a private wireless connectivity project that yielded a solution combining Nokia Digital Automation Cloud (DAC) application platform with Kyndryl's consulting, design, implementation and managed services.

The solution is designed to support the move to industry 4.0, the company states, which is transforming how companies manufacture and distribute their products by interacting with IoT, cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and other advances to their environments and operations.

According to a statement from the company, the collaboration has already resulted in private LTE and 5G real world deployments and several proof-of-concept (PoC) applications for Dow Inc. to support Industry 4.0-enabled worker safety and collaboration, asset tracking and other capabilities using a blueprint that it plans to expand and deploy across its sites worldwide.

Kyndryl and Nokia state the companies 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.

Kyndryl global practice leader of network and edge computing, Paul Savill, says, "As enterprises across every industry are seeking new ways to digitally transform their operations, 5G and edge computing are growing so they can harness the promise of these emerging technologies.

"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.

Working to provide solutions over LTE and 5G standards, Kyndryl and Nokia state they are addressing the marketplace opportunities that already utilise the strong industrial ecosystem available now with LTE, while also looking at 5G enhancements in future 3GPP releases, with existing Nokia DAC 5G stand alone-ready private wireless solutions.

Nokia head of global enterprise business Chris Johnson says, "By combining Kyndryl's world-class services expertise and global reach with Nokias mission-critical, industry leading private wireless and industrial edge computing solutions, we will enable even more organisations to transform their operations, accelerate their digitalisation journey and reap the benefits of Industry 4.0.

Nokia DAC is a digitisation service platform featuring industrial-grade private wireless connectivity and edge computing, focused on strengthening the company's 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 for edge cloud, IP networking, optics, fixed access, 4G and 5G core, and network operations software technologies.

This focuses on addressing growing market needs. For instance, asset-intensive industries are adopting smart and autonomous systems fuelled by data and machine learning to improve agility, productivity and efficiency.

In particular, 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.