Nokia is working with Lenovo to develop networking-and-automation solutions for the data centre industry. They said their joint products will support “massive and highly precise” compute, storage, and connectivity needs for escalating artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) workloads in the enterprise and telecoms markets. They will jointly market their new combined solutions, they said. They talked up the security credentials and energy efficiency of their various products, being compiled into the new solutions.
The pair will bundle Lenovo’s so-called ThinkSystem portfolio of high-performance servers and storage and Nokia’s data centre network solution and “event-driven” network automation (EDA) platform. The Finnish firm’s data centre network offer incorporates ‘data centre fabric’, IP routing, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS attack) security portfolios. They will also produce a blueprint architecture, they said, to enable “seamless automation” of compute-intensive workloads with enhanced observability, programmability, and extensibility.
These aspects are “crucial for adapting to dynamic environments,” they stated. They went on: “Highly reliable, scalable and secure blueprint solutions are needed to support massive storage and high-speed data transfer inside and across data centres globally… As AI models are trained, data centres will be needed for inferencing where AI clusters are networked both within and between the data centres at the edge, which requires high-speed, reliable and secure interconnectivity.”
Security and sustainability, flagged in their respective products, are key concerns for data centres, they said. Lenovo stated: “This collaboration not only generates cost savings but also opens new revenue streams for providers through innovative AI and data consumption models.” Nokia said the collaboration will “enhance the performance and reliability of data centre operations”.
Charles Ferland, vice president for edge and communications service pProviders at Lenovo, said: “Lenovo has a longstanding commitment to deliver the most reliable and sustainable AI infrastructure. Our partnership with Nokia to bundle AI solutions is a natural alignment. Together, we provide a robust platform that meets the needs of telecoms and enterprise sectors, enabling them to deploy AI clouds and manage their data efficiently.”
Vach Kompella, senior vice president and general manager in Nokia’s IP networks business, said: “By combining Nokia’s Data Center Fabric and Event Driven Automation with Lenovo’s ThinkSystem AI portfolio, we deliver a high performance, scalable data centre networking solution designed to efficiently manage and automate AI/ML workloads, with a strong emphasis on security and energy efficiency… We are setting new standards in the industry and driving forward the future of data centre technology.”
