Tencent and Baidu, which both operate huge cloud capacity in China and overseas, are to use Nokia’s webscale DCI solutions, based on the Nokia 1830 Photonic Service Interconnect (PSI) and powered by the Nokia Photonic Service Engine (PSE).
These enable webscale operators to support edge cloud applications such as Industry 4.0, AI, machine learning and autonomous driving. Nokia said its DCI and SDN solutions maximise capacity and agility, while simplifying and automating key operational functions for lower costs.
Markus Bochert (pictured), president of Nokia Greater China, said: “We continue to expand our relationship with China’s webscale giants. Our leading DCI product portfolio and technology innovations in photonics and SDN controllers are key, as well as our strong R&D capabilities, globalised supply chain and highly responsive service teams. These latest contracts with Baidu and Tencent consolidate our presence in the webscale market in China, which we are confident will continue to flourish in the coming years.”
Tencent and Baidu are two of the top four China-based webscale operators. Baidu is the number one search engine and Tencent leads in social media and online gaming. They have large cloud operations in China and abroad to support their global businesses and connecting their data centres around the world requires ultra-high optical bandwidth and software-defined networking (SDN) that are highly responsive to the fast-shifting nature of cloud services.
The Nokia webscale DCI solution is now present in 13 of China’s webscale providers, supporting applications from e-commerce to search and online gaming.
Global webscale IT market by region
Source: Maximise Market Research
In 2017, Nokia established a special unit to help large-scale Chinese internet firms expand overseas following the start of operations at the Nokia Shanghai Bell joint venture in China. At the time Nokia said the project underlined its “decades-long commitment to China and to supporting Chinese economic growth”.
