It uniquely combines computing, storage, wired and wireless networking, one-click industrial applications, and automated management into a unified digital transformation platform with on-premises operational technology (OT).
 
Industry 4.0 requires extensive digitization and connectivity of equipment, machinery, and other assets in industrial environments. Due to the volume and speed of data generated, and the need for real-time automation, it is increasingly necessary to process data at the edge—close to where it is generated. Gartner predicts that, by 2025, 75% of industrial data will be processed at the edge.  
 
By adopting Nokia's MX Industrial Edge, businesses will benefit from an on-premises cloud-edge architecture that unifies edge requirements into an easy-to-use, anywhere-deployable as-a-service package. This eliminates the complexity, knowledge, and cost barriers typically associated with deploying, integrating, and managing the lifecycle of high-performance computing applications and mission-critical networks.   
 
The platform's enormous scalability enables multi-site businesses, such as logistics companies, to deploy the same technology across all their locations, large or small, realizing the benefits of 'develop once, deploy everywhere'. Nokia's MX Industrial Edge is powered by Nokia's Digital Automation Cloud, providing the enterprise with a single point of control user experience where everything from applications to private wireless networks can be managed. 

Stephan Litjens, Head of Enterprise Solutions at Nokia, said: “Industry 4.0 is transforming asset-intensive industries by integrating and digitizing all processes and systems across the entire industrial value chain. This will generate an explosion of data – and taking the right actions based on that real-time data will be crucial to the success of digital transformation initiatives. Ensuring performance, along with keeping data local and secure, while also being resilient to internet connectivity failures, is not possible with a centralized cloud, making the edge at headquarters the ideal architecture for this new breed of OT applications. Nokia’s MX Industrial Edge has been built from the ground up to provide the guaranteed performance, security, and reliability that OT use cases demand.”. 

Caroline Chappell, Research Director at Analysys Mason, noted: “Increasingly, companies are focusing their digital transformation efforts on applying software and cloud capabilities to operational technologies (OT) to reap the benefits of agility and cost efficiency in asset-intensive industrial environments. Companies need edge clouds on-premises, such as Nokia’s MX Industrial Edge, to provide secure, resilient, and high-performance runtime environments for mission-critical OT applications. Companies will be looking for an edge cloud solution partner that can draw on a broad ecosystem of cloud stack providers and industrial applications, understand their stringent operational needs and data sovereignty requirements, and bring deep network insights to an increasingly complex and connected industrial landscape.”.  
 
Nokia's edge solution is also available to businesses in combination with Nokia Digital Automation Cloud applications, such as High Accuracy Indoor Positioning, Plug and Play private wireless networks, or with Nokia's alternative private wireless solution, Nokia Modular Private Wireless (MPW). Usage-based pricing models enable flexible subscriptions with customized payment plans, while minimizing upfront investment.  
 
Nokia's MX Industrial Edge is offered in a wide range of configurations to support small, medium, and large-scale industrial deployments. Based on Nokia's AirFrame Open Edge server, leveraging the latest Intel innovations and CPUs for high-capacity processing, Nokia's edge solution is designed for compute-intensive tasks and advanced AI/Machine Learning (ML) workloads, with optional support via a graphics processing unit (GPU). Furthermore, high-performance network interface cards (NICs) and packet processing systems can be expanded to support large-scale stand-alone (SA) 5G private wireless traffic flows. It delivers extreme resilience and reliability through a comprehensive high-availability (HA) architecture, supports geographic redundancy (GR) for business continuity, and ensures guaranteed performance through integrated orchestration features for service performance management. 
 
Caroline Chan, Vice President of Intel’s Networking Platforms Group and General Manager of Intel’s Networking Business Incubation Division, stated: “Nokia and Intel have a long-standing collaboration to deliver innovative solutions from the core to the edge of the intelligent network, which Nokia is expanding to accelerate the adoption of Industry 4.0. The combination of Intel’s innovations and CPUs with Nokia’s MX Industrial Edge Platform and 5G technology will empower enterprise customers to connect, deploy, and manage their environments. Across various vertical markets, businesses will benefit from scalable performance and reliable, high-speed, low-latency communications.”. 
 
Enterprise customers can accelerate their OT digitization initiatives with one-click deployment of industrial applications on the MX Industrial Edge. The catalog includes Nokia applications for a variety of common digitization use cases and is complemented by applications from independent software vendors (ISVs) that have undergone a rigorous onboarding process involving reliability, performance, and security testing. Furthermore, Nokia's ecosystem-neutral approach also allows industrial customers to leverage cloud-compatible edge applications available on hyperscale clouds as well as those from industrial partner clouds. 

Finally, the MX Industrial Edge also simplifies the complexity of IIoT system integration because its industrial connectors provide translation of industrial data protocols, as Nokia's Integrated Operations Center provides a single point of control for all systems, in addition to helping create industrial automation workflows.

Litjens added: “All industrial and enterprise campuses, such as factories, logistics hubs, ports, etc., are multi-solution and multi-partner environments. By taking a neutral approach to ecosystem and integration plug-ins, our customers gain unparalleled flexibility and benefit from the broadest set of applications and use cases to adopt innovations and accelerate their digital transformation.”.   

*Operational Technology (OT) provides the technology to monitor and control the physical processes, systems, devices, and infrastructure of a production environment; that is, it provides the means to 'control the physical with the digital'.