• Nokia views the datacentre sector as a key area of growth for its IP routing and optical networking units
• Lenovo has developed an AI infrastructure portfolio
• The companies have joined forces to offer packaged solutions that can optimise datacentre deployments

Only days after Nokia’s CEO Pekka Lundmark declared that datacentres were now the company’s number-one growth target, the Finnish vendor has teamed up with enterprise and consumer tech giant Lenovo to develop what they call “high-performance AI/ML datacentre solutions”. 

The solutions, according to the duo, will be jointly marketed to enterprises, telcos, and digital infrastructure and cloud providers. 

Lenovo, which has its main operations in Beijing and Morrisville, North Carolina, is probably best known for making personal computer (PC) products, but its portfolio is increasingly diversified and it has a thriving division (Infrastructure Solutions Group) that is focused on the needs of enterprises and datacentre operators. For Lenovo’s fiscal first quarter, which ended 30 June, its Infrastructure Solutions Group reported revenues of $3.2bn, up by 65% year on year, “driven by strong growth in its cloud service provider business”. 

For the partnership, the vendors will combine Lenovo’s ‘ThinkSystem AI’ portfolio, which includes x86 servers powered by Intel and AMD processors, with the Nokia datacentre solution, which spans switches, routers and distributed denial of service (DDoS) security products. Nokia’s contribution to the partnership also includes its recently launched Event-Driven Automation (EDA) system, which has been developed specifically for datacentres. 

The two companies said their partnership was a response to a growing need for “highly reliable, scalable and secure blueprint solutions” that are needed to support massive storage and high-speed data transfer (inside and across datacentres) worldwide. 

Charles Ferland, VP of Lenovo’s edge and communications service providers business, described the tie-up with Nokia as a “natural alignment” that “not only generates cost savings but also opens new revenue streams for providers through innovative AI and data consumption models”. 

Vach Kompella, general manager of IP networks business at Nokia, bullishly described the partnership as “setting new standards in the industry and driving forward the future of datacentre technology”.

- Ken Wieland, Contributing Editor, TelecomTV