Product News: Nokia boosts Digital Automation Cloud functionality

Nokia announced new added value features and digital automation enablers for its Nokia Digital Automation Cloud (DAC) private wireless-networking platform. The new features offer an expanded portfolio of Nokia apps as well as a growing ecosystem of IoT modules and industry connectors essential to Industry 4.0 implementation, according to its maker.

Enabled by its cloud-native application framework, the Nokia DAC application catalog provides a ‘click and deploy’ approach to software installation, deployment and application-lifecycle management, per Nokia. The catalog features a range of offerings that include Nokia High Accuracy Positioning, Nokia SpaceTime scene analytics, newly launched Nokia DAC team comms and VoIP, as well as a suite of industrial connectors. In addition, the catalog contains Microsoft Azure IoT Edge services enabling deployment of Microsoft Azure IoT Edge Modules such as Modbus.

“With its combination of high-performance wireless networking, cloud and edge computing, Nokia DAC is the ideal platform for organizations eyeing use cases such as IoT, analytics, automation and remote operations,” said Stephan Litjens, general manager, Nokia Digital Automation. “With the new functionality and added value features introduced today, we further ease and accelerate customers’ transformation path towards Industry 4.0.”

Nokia DAC team comms and DAC VoIP now offer customers voice and video solutions for secure one-to-one and one-to-many campus-wide communication. Delivered over the platform’s scalable edge cloud, these newly available on-premise applications are ideal for asset-intensive locations of all sizes such as ports, mines and factories, according their maker.

Further, a suite of new Nokia DAC industrial connectors enables customers to use the platform to handle machine-communication protocols such as PROFINET, EtherCAT and Modbus. This allows customers to integrate private wireless and edge computing with existing and legacy systems, machines and infrastructure.

“New features announced today address the questions facing organizations as they begin to implement Industry 4.0 use cases,” said Tuuli Ahava, head of Nokia DAC Applications. “Data security, backward and forward compatibility, legacy system integration, ecosystem access, and ease-of-use are just some of the concerns that the DAC platform resolves in one optimized solution.”