Nokia and Microsoft bundle their cloud offerings

A strategic collaboration between Nokia and Microsoft is banking on companies wanting to buy their cloud hardware and software together.

Here’s the official pitch: “By bringing together Microsoft cloud solutions and Nokia’s expertise in mission-critical networking, the companies are uniquely positioned to help enterprises and communications service providers transform their businesses.” This seems to be mainly about things like private networks, SD-WAN and private cloud, but specific commercial use-cases are thin on the ground at this stage.

“We are thrilled to unite Nokia’s mission-critical networks with Microsoft’s cloud solutions,” said Kathrin Buvac, President of Nokia Enterprise and Chief Strategy Officer. “Together, we will accelerate the digital transformation journey towards Industry 4.0, driving economic growth and productivity for both enterprises and service providers.”

“Bringing together Microsoft’s expertise in intelligent cloud solutions and Nokia’s strength in building business and mission-critical networks will unlock new connectivity and automation scenarios,” said Jason Zander, EVP of Microsoft Azure. “We’re excited about the opportunities this will create for our joint customers across industries.”

This initiative is more than just good PowerPoint and canned quote, however, with BT announced as its first paying punter. Apparently it’s already offering a managed service that integrates Microsoft Azure cloud and Nokia SD-WAN stuff. Specifically this means Azure vWAN and Nuage SD-WAN 2.0.

Apart from that the joint announcement mainly just bangs on about how great both companies are at this sort of thing – in other words a thinly-veiled sales pitch. The market will decide if it needs this kind of complete virtual WAN package and whether or not Nokia and Microsoft are the best companies to provide it. But there’s no denying BT is a strong first customer win.