Nokia sharpened its focus on the growing enterprise segment, introducing a new network architecture designed with industrial requirements in mind and a dedicated laboratory where partners can test new use cases.

At a press event, Nokia executives told Mobile World Live its Future X for Industries strategy expands on the creation of a new Enterprise Business Unit in October, and provides a framework for Nokia to guide discussions with potential business customers which may be less familiar with how network technology works.

The initiative includes the debut of a new layered network architecture designed to meet key industrial demands by bringing together IoT; edge computing; cloud; artificial intelligence; machine learning; and mission-critical networking technologies. A new Future X Lab at the headquarters of Nokia’s Bell Labs facility in the US is also part of the mix, giving the company a space to demonstrate and test use cases with clients.

“We didn’t go looking for this. It came to us with lots of requests of ‘how can you fix my production environment because Wi-Fi isn’t working for it,’” CTO Marcus Weldon explained. “We realised we should stop talking and start doing.”

Weldon said the lab will be a key tool in determining the network and performance requirements for each new industrial use case Nokia hopes to address: “The way we figure out what to add in is by building the live thing, because this is not a segment where it’s obvious until you build it.”

Focus on enterprise
While Nokia has engaged with enterprise customers over the past several years, Chris Johnson, head of Global Enterprise Verticals, said the company is now concentrating on what it sees as an “enormous opportunity”.

The enterprise business accounts for around 5 per cent of Nokia’s revenues today, but Johnson said the segment is experiencing double digit growth. Within the last nine months, he noted the vendor added more than 100 new customers seeking large scale industrial deployments.

In addition to driving new revenue, Johnson pointed out the push into industrial and enterprise will give Nokia a chance to diversify beyond its traditional service provider business. He said the company had already established itself in the transportation, public sector and energy verticals, and now has its eye on making gains in the manufacturing and logistics markets.