Nokia and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) are combining forces in a strategic collaboration on Internet of Things (IoT) solutions for enterprise customers. The announcement comes as HPE is unveiling solutions at the Discover London 2016 event this week.
The two organizations already collaborate and have partnerships in the area of network functions virtualization (NFV) solutions, for example, but the IoT partnership will expand on that, with joint marketing around two IoT vertical enterprise segments: industrial/manufacturing and smart city applications.
In the industrial/manufacturing sector, solutions will address asset management, smart manufacturing, remote site automation and predictive maintenance. Smart city solutions include things such as smart lighting and smart buildings. Their joint solutions are expected to be ready starting in early 2017.
The companies say their joint offerings combine connectivity, core networking, data aggregation and compute technologies from Nokia and HPE. The companies are working on a proof-of-concept for smart cities, combining Nokia's routing capabilities with HPE's Hybrid IT capabilities for joint project delivery models.
"We are pleased to extend our partnership with HPE into the IoT space. HPE's market presence offers Nokia expedited and increased access to the enterprise market and target verticals along with a complimentary portfolio of products and services,” Kathrin Buvac, chief strategy officer at Nokia, said in a press release.
“The addition of Nokia to the HPE IoT partner ecosystem will bring broader choice and market-leading technologies to our joint customers. HPE and Nokia have a long history of innovation that will help our customers through their journey of digitization,” Antonio Neri, executive vice president, head of Enterprise Group at HPE, said in the release.
HPE has joined Nokia's IoT Community, an ecosystem for collaborating on solution concepts, end-to-end prototypes, business models and market trials, while Nokia is joining part of HPE's IoT initiative within HPE's industry leading Partner Ready program.
HPE used its Discover London 2016 event this week to make several announcements, including its attempts to remove barriers for the mass adoption of IoT. HPE's Mobile Virtual Network Enabler is designed to give customers more control over IoT devices that need cellular connectivity and services, and it's fostering the emergence of new Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) that resell IoT connectivity directly to customers at price points it says are optimized for large scale M2M and IoT deployments.