Nokia’s decision to partner with Google strengthens its cloud credentials with customers

Nokia’s announcement that it is migrating the majority of its IT estate to Google Cloud Platform signals that it has joined leading operators that are pursuing cloud-first IT transformations. It is the first major telecoms vendor to sign a 5-year, multi-billion dollar, comprehensive IT deal with a public cloud provider; a move that it expects will both save significant, unspecified operating costs and increase its knowledge and experience of running systems at scale in the cloud. Both of these benefits will increase Nokia’s credibility and cloud credentials with operator customers that are intending to pursue the same path. This, in turn, will give the company an important advantage over competitors. Nokia can demonstrate that it understands how to operate in a multi-cloud environment (it will retain existing relationships with AWS and Azure and move to SaaS for key systems) and will be able to pass on the valuable lessons that it is learning as it executes on an ambitious, 2-year IT migration programme.