Nokia And Juniper Team up On Mobile Operator Cloud Services

Nokia and Juniper Networks on Monday are to work together on delivering carrier-grade cloud services to help telecommunications providers more rapidly roll out new services.

The announcement comes shortly after the completion of Nokia’s $7.5 billion (£4.4bn) sale of its mobile handset business to Microsoft, and marks a renewed push to expand its networking business.

Following the divestment of its handsets, Nokia’s revenues now mostly come from sales of wireless networking equipment. The two companies already work together, and in February reports said Nokia was looking into acquiring Juniper.

Liquid Core

The new collaboration will draw on Nokia’s Liquid Core applications, which include network function virtualisation (NFV) and telco cloud management and orchestration offerings, and Juniper’s MetaFabric data centre architecture, including Juniper’s Contrail network virtualisation and cloud network automation product, which is based on software-defined networking (SDN).

The offering will be based on OpenStack, the open source cloud software project, which offers automated application deployment, software-defined application connectivity and network management components.

Nokia’s Liquid Core offers virtualised functions for telcos’ networks, including virtualised Mobile Management Entity (MME), virtualised IP Multimedia Core Network Subsystem (IMS) and virtualised Home Subscriber Server (HSS), and also includes Nokia’s NetAct network management product and its Cloud Application Manager, which allows telcos to build cloud-based services.

Juniper said its MetaFabric architecture and Contrail SDN/NFV controller can be used to build an automated, secure and scalable mobile edge network.

Nokia will also offer services to help operators build their own clouds and migrate existing services onto cloud-based networks. Nokia and Juniper plan to deliver the offering later this year.

The company has also launched a £59 million fund that will be used to invest in companies that can boost HERE Maps, which is one of the other businesses that Nokia has retained following the sale of its handset business, and is geared towards providing location services for connected cars.

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