Nokia's MX Industrial Edge server, a new all-in-one server designed for industrial applications in asset-heavy industries, reached 100 Gb/s in a recent test, according to the Finnish vendor.

The on-premises edge kit, which is managed by Nokia Digital Automation Cloud, bolsters Nokia’s position in the private wireless market, specifically industrial sectors. “The focus is on all the business and mission-critical segments’ operational technology needs,” including manufacturing, logistics, ports, airports, utilities, mining, and agriculture, Stephan Litjens, head of enterprise solutions at Nokia, wrote in response to questions.

Nokia claims more than 340 private wireless customers today, and that experience highlighted “a clear gap in the market,” Litjens explained. “Industrials using private wireless can fix their wireless reliable connectivity needs and trust connectivity to the machines, assets, sensors, and workers, but are looking for similar mission criticality and universal capabilities that private wireless provides.”

The scalable offering provides enterprises with a capacity-based pricing model that depends on the workloads and applications running on Nokia MX Industrial Edge, Litjens said. It also combines compute, storage, wired and wireless networking, industrial applications, and automated management in a unified platform for on-premises deployments.

The equipment is based on the Nokia AirFrame Open Edge server, an Intel CPU, network interface cards (NIC), and packet processing systems that can support 5G standalone private wireless networks. 

Nokia designed MX Industrial Edge to meet critical network requirements while allowing industrial organizations to “tap into a cloud hyperscaler’s edge application catalog” and internally developed or third-party software, Litjens said. This approach allows enterprises to “combine all their discrete edge deployments on a single scalable on-premises edge platform,” he said. 

The vendor also assembled an ecosystem of pre-integrated applications from partners, including PTC’s Kepware and Linux Foundation’s Fledge industrial connectivity software, Smart Mobile Labs’ Edge Video Orchestrator technology, Taqtile’s Manifest platform for mixed reality, and Microsoft Azure IoT Edge services.

The applications and specific outcomes enterprises can achieve with the platform include voice communication, indoor positioning, video analytics processing, site security, autonomous vehicle or machine management, manufacturing defect detection, predictive maintenance algorithms, digital twins, and worker manifests, Litjens said. 

Moreover, he noted that the platform "is connectivity agnostic and private wireless required elements — core, management, local break out — are possible applications.”

During the recent test that achieved a total aggregated throughput of 100 Gb/s across 120 users, Nokia provided a single AirFrame Open Edge R20 server with a third-generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor and dual 100 Gb/s NICs. 

“Enterprises are increasingly focusing their digital transformation efforts on the application of software and cloud capabilities to operational technologies to reap the benefits of agility and cost efficiency in asset-intensive industrial environments,” Caroline Chappell, research director at Analysys Mason, wrote in a prepared statement.

“Enterprises will be looking for an edge cloud solution partner that can tap into a broad ecosystem of cloud stack and industrial application vendors, understand their stringent operational needs, data sovereignty requirements, and which can bring a deep knowledge of the network to an increasingly complex, connected industrial landscape,” Chappell concluded.