Nokia continues to lean into data center and cloud opportunities outside of the traditional telecommunication radio access network (RAN) space.

The most recent lean is Nokia’s future data center switching support for the Microsoft-developed Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC) platform, which now lives under the Linux Foundation banner. That platform will be an option within Nokia’s next-generation data center fabric offering.

That integration will also tap into Nokia’s Event-Driven Automation platform that can manage and automate SONiC deployments.

Michael Bushong, VP of data center at Nokia, noted in a blog post that the vendor will continue to offer its SR Linux network operating system (NOS).

“For those indoctrinated in the open-source SONiC NOS approach, this means they can buy a solution from us when they previously might not have considered it,” Bushong wrote. “For those curious about SONiC, it means they can purchase hardware that supports their speculative interests and evaluate whether SONiC or SR Linux is the best fit for their environments.”

Bushong added that “SONiC is not some engineering oddity within Nokia. We are active participants in the SONiC community and have made notable contributions such as chassis-based SONiC, an ARM port, and small footprint optimizations.” The executive linked this commitment to Microsoft recently signing a five-year extension with Nokia for the vendor to continue supplying data center switching equipment.

Nokia cloud API’s gain support Nokia’s data center switching expansion followed the vendor’s recent purchase of Rapid, which the vendor hopes will further boost its cloud API strategy.

That deal will integrate Rapid’s developer-focused API marketplace that it claims transacts up to 4 billion API calls per month into Nokia’s Network-as-Code business. Financial terms of the deal were not announced, but reports indicated it was for less than $100 million, which is substantially less than Rapid’s once-vaunted $1 billion valuation status.

Nokia has been pointed in bolstering its cloud- and developer-focused API ambitions despite a more telecom-focused drive from rival Ericsson.

“We have … taken a slightly different approach than our competitor. We have developed all of this organically,” Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark said during the vendor's most recent earnings call. “We came to a conclusion that we do not need to acquire a legacy best player to enter this market. We have developed this organically and with pretty good progress. We announced this initiative a year ago, and we are currently having more than 20 partners across the ecosystem, including 16 CSPs … so we are able to offer extremely attractive base of networks to the developers who want to use our APIs. So overall, this is a good thing to the industry.”

Analyst firms have noted that Nokia’s API angle could prove compelling. ABI Research in a recent report ranked Nokia as the overall leader and top innovator within the telecom API space.

“Nokia’s success in creating a cohesive network API portfolio that directly addresses operator needs for configurability and standardization, and internal exposure and external exposure earned it the position of top Innovator,” the ABI report notes, adding that “it is noteworthy that Nokia follows a policy of impartiality across public cloud providers, giving operators freedom to select their preferred hyperscaler partner.”

Nokia RAN plans remain erratic While Nokia is making headway in the data center and cloud API space, its more traditional telecommunications radio access network (RAN) business continues to battle.

Nokia was notably absent from recent open RAN expansions announced by U.S.-based operators AT&T and Verizon. The former is continuing to remove active Nokia equipment from its network, while the latter stopped buying RAN gear from Nokia several years ago.

Nokia’s management noted that its overall mobile network sales dropped 17% during the third quarter of this year compared to the previous year due to slowing sales in North America and India.

Despite the U.S. struggles, Nokia is continuing to see RAN success in other markets.

The vendor announced late last month that German telecom giant Deutsche Telekom (DT) was going to use Nokia’s open RAN equipment on 3,000 sites in Germany, marking a return of Nokia as an equipment provider to DT. Notably, that deal also calls for the Nokia equipment to integrate with newly deployed Fujitsu open RAN gear, highlighting a positive open RAN interoperability win for Nokia.

However, analysts have noted that the vendor is continuing to slip further behind larger rivals Ericsson and Huawei in the RAN space.

Lundmark acknowledged this struggle during the earnings call, but also pointed to Nokia's opportunities outside of that space.

“Even though the telco TAM [total addressable market] is expected to recover somewhat next year, we have to be realistic,” Lundmark said. “Telco TAM will never be a significant growth market so the only way to grow there will be through taking market share, which we have cost targeting, but it’s not the growth market. … Data centers will be our No. 1 growth target for the coming years. There will be others as well, but that will be the No. 1.”