Nokia has launched a cloud-native industrial edge solution for enterprise operational technology (OT) digitalisation and Industry 4.0. The Nokia MX Industrial Edge combines compute, storage, wired/wireless networking, one-click industrial applications and automated management onto a unified, on-premise OT digital transformation platform. Incorporating Intel technology and CPUs, the MX Industrial Edge is designed to address new categories of Industry 4.0 applications that require increased capabilities and performance at the network edge, and tight integration with industrial systems and networking solutions.

The platform’s scalability enables multi-facility enterprises, such as logistics companies, to deploy the same technology in all their locations, whether large or small, making the benefits of ‘develop-once, deploy-everywhere’ a reality. The Nokia MX Industrial Edge is powered by the Nokia Digital Automation Cloud (Nokia DAC), providing the enterprise a single pane of glass user experience to manage everything from applications to private wireless networking.  

Nokia MX Industrial Edge is based on the Nokia AirFrame Open Edge server, which employs Intel’s technology and CPU for high capacity processing. The Nokia edge solution is designed for compute-intensive tasks and AI/Machine Learning (ML) workloads optionally supported through graphic processing unit (GPU) support. It incorporates high-performance network interface cards (NICs) and packet processing systems designed to scale to support very large 5G standalone (SA) private wireless traffic flows. Resilience and reliability are supported through an end-to-end, high availability (HA) architecture, supporting geographical redundancy (GR) for business continuity and integrated orchestration features for service performance management.  

The platform is designed to accelerate OT digitalisation through one-click deployment of industrial applications. The catalogue contains Nokia applications for a variety of common digitalisation use cases and is complemented by applications from independent software vendors (ISV) which undergo an onboarding process testing reliability, performance, and security.

Industrial connectors simplify southbound IIoT system integration with industrial data protocols translation. Together with the Nokia Integrated Operations Center, these provide a single pane of glass view from all systems as well as helping create industrial automation workflows. 

Stephan Litjens, Head of Enterprise Solutions at Nokia, said: ”Industry 4.0 is transforming asset-intensive industries by integrating and digitalising all processes and systems across the industrial value chain. This will result in an explosion of data – and taking the right actions based on that data in near real-time will be critical to the success of digital transformation initiatives. Ensuring performance, along with aspects like keeping data local and secure while being resilient against internet connectivity failures, are not possible with a centralised cloud, making the on-prem edge the architecture of choice for this new breed of OT applications. The Nokia MX Industrial Edge is built from the ground up to deliver the guaranteed performance, security and reliability that OT digitalisation use cases require.”  

Caroline Chappell, Research Director, Analysys Mason, said: “Enterprises are increasingly focusing their digital transformation efforts on the application of software and cloud capabilities to operational technologies (OT) to reap the benefits of agility and cost-efficiency in asset-intensive industrial environments. Enterprises need on-premise edge clouds, like the Nokia MX Industrial Edge, to provide secure, resilient, and high-performance execution environments for mission-critical OT applications. Enterprises will be looking for an edge cloud solution partner that can tap into a broad ecosystem of cloud stack and industrial application vendors, understand their stringent operational needs, data sovereignty requirements, and which can bring a deep knowledge of the network to an increasingly complex, connected industrial landscape.”   

Caroline Chan, vice president, Network Platforms Group and GM, Network Business Incubation Division, Intel “Nokia and Intel have a long-standing partnership to provide innovative solutions from the core to the edge of the intelligent network, which Nokia is expanding to accelerate Industry 4.0 adoption. The combination of Intel’s innovations and CPUs alongside Nokia’s MX Industrial Edge Platform and 5G technology will offer enterprise customers the ability to connect, deploy and manage their environments. Across different verticals, enterprises will benefit from the scalable performance and high-speed, low-latency reliable communications.”  

Litjens said: “All industrial and enterprise campuses, such as factories, logistics hubs, ports, etc. are multi-solution and multi-partner environments. By adopting an ecosystem-neutral approach and integration plug-ins, our customers get unparalleled flexibility and benefit from the widest array of applications and use cases to adopt innovations to advance their digital transformation.”