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Nokia’s new Cognitive Operations edge-compute platform for the mining sector, initially, looks familiar, and raises questions about the sale of its ECE business and its retreat from the ‘campus’ end of the private 5G market.
In sum – what to know
Campus AI – Nokia appears to have a new campus-AI (minus 5G) strategy, with a new edge compute and multi-access comms product for mining companies, emergency services, and military bases.
Private 5G – Crossover with its old DAC and MXIE systems is hard to ignore, and appears to contradict its recent private-5G strategy and also create competition with whoever buys its ECE business.
Third party – Decision to integrate Rajant’s mesh technology rather than its own ‘campus’ private 5G is possibly a clue to what CO/CEN actually represent – and what Nokia thinks it should own.
This all sounds rather familiar: a Nokia edge bundle that combines industrial comms, computing, and “operational AI” in a “field-deployable system” for mission-critical enterprises – in “field operations” where “failure is not an option”. So says a press statement from the Finnish firm today (September 10) about a new Industry 4.0 platform called Cognitive Operations (CO), hosted on-prem or in the cloud, which works with a new ruggedized multi-access GPU-embedded edge router called Cognitive Edge Node (CEN). It is pitched for the mining sector initially; versions for emergency services (public safety) and “tactical” military operations (defense) will be released in due course.
If none of that strikes you as odd – familiar, strange even – then you haven’t been watching Nokia’s enterprise strategy closely enough over the past decade. Or else you’ve been watching too closely. Either way, it raises questions given the firm’s retreat from the enterprise ‘campus’ edge (ECE), and the imminent sale of its ECE (private wireless-and-compute) unit – expected to close by the end of the year. Because Nokia already has a CO/CEN suite of sorts, via ECE – in the form of its MXIE compute platform, and, specifically, its MX Grid ‘micro-edge’ solution (and MX Boost multi-RAT management product, and related router products).
There is conceptual overlap, at least – of OT-edge connectivity, computing, applications, and intelligence. Its MXIE products were built and sold with its seminal DAC private 4G/5G system – the same ‘campus’ proposition that underpins almost-all of its mining customers, which will be transferred to a new parent with the ECE sale. Mining, to be clear, is a classic ‘campus’ case; it is not, traditionally, a venue for private wide-area-network (WAN) set-ups of the type Nokia remains keen to sell. Ericsson, its rival, has scored notable wins in the mining space with its campus 4G/5G system – including since Nokia said it is quitting to focus on private macro-scale (WAN) 5G in four sectors: energy (utilities), transport (rail), public safety (emergency services), and defense (military).
So you see the confusion? The jury is out; maybe RCR is reading too much into it, and there is no old/new crossover in terms of product or strategy – and the PR messaging is actually quite clear. The last point seems unlikely, and might be a (reasonable) symptom of so much strategic change. Maybe Nokia has performed an about-turn, and decided to keep its campus proposition, or parts of it – its MXIE stuff, or smart-looking drone networks business? Even more unlikely / not going to happen; the Q4 sale looks to be on. Questions have been sent to Nokia, also about the inclusion of a third-party network provider, Rajant, in the CO/CEN offer – rather than bundling with DAC.
Again; more questions than answers – it might be the DAC system works perfectly well, alongside. The new GPU acceleration, multi-access networking, and mesh (Rajant) integration might be markedly different. Indeed, there might be good logic here; mesh networking is useful for highly mobile, disrupted environments, and CEN may be deliberately access-agnostic – rather than just presenting another Nokia box. But the news also begs questions about Nokia’s competitive dynamic with ECE’s new owner in the future, when a deal is done, and just how its new campus-AI strategy fits with its old campus-5G one.
Nokia might be separating the compute/AI layer from the access layer, which would explain how CO survives the ECE/MXIE disposal – and would represent a bigger strategic play than just a deja-vu notice about an OT platform launch. Also: what is Bell Labs’ role in both systems? Answers on a postcard; RCR will update, or write again, when Nokia sends the answers. In the meantime, the CO/CEN product launch, as it is, does not look to be entirely new as a proposition; the main thrust of it was discussed with Mining Technology last year (according to when the page was indexed). What is new, perhaps, is its positioning (teased-out), independent of its old OT-5G play.
The release adds colour, as well. The CO platform – still sounding like it brings together elements of the MXIE app dashboard, and also re-articulating the original ECE pitch – gives OT teams site and asset intelligence via “AI assistance, 3D digital twins, video analytics, predictive maintenance, and resilient hybrid connectivity”, writes Nokia. It can be deployed on-premises with local IT infrastructure or hosted on Microsoft Azure Marketplace, to be downloaded to run in a private cloud. Nokia states: “CO creates a dynamic hybrid wireless network fabric with no single point of access failure, helping keep mission-critical operations running in the toughest environments.”
It goes on: “CEN… combines advanced connectivity, AI-driven multi-access networking, and accelerated edge computing. With embedded on-device GPU-accelerated computing, [it] increases intelligence in field-deployed vehicles and remote locations. CEN is designed with an ecosystem of partners in mind. Among other access technologies, Nokia has collaborated with Rajant, the pioneer of Kinetic Mesh wireless networking, to integrate Rajant’s InstaMesh technology directly into CEN.”
There are some punchy quotes in there too. Lelio Di Martino, general manager of CO at Nokia, called the launch a “defining step in Nokia’s promise to deliver connected intelligence”. He said: “We are building a future-ready system for autonomous mission-critical infrastructure, with public safety agencies, defense forces, and mining/construction companies leading the way.” In a supplied quote, Ildefonso de la Cruz Morales, senior principal analyst at Omdia, talked about the “convergence of AI, edge computing, and mission-critical comms” as a “key requirement for organizations… to improve operational performance and worker safety”.
He said Nokia’s new platform “demonstrates how these capabilities can be integrated to provide actionable intelligence and more reliable, resilient operations across industrial environments.”
