Nokia has made more progress on its ecosystem-neutral approach to MXIE, its on-prem mission critical industrial edge compute solution.

The Finnish supplier announced a couple of new MXIE app partners – Siemens MindConnect Software Agent and Zscaler Private Access – which, in Nokia's telling, "will enable non-cloud native workloads and applications to run in a safe and controlled environment alongside containerized applications."

Figure 1: Siemens MindConnect Software Agent and Zscaler Private Access climb on board to expand capabilities of Nokia's on-prem industrial edge compute solution.
(Source: Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash)

Nokia bragged that the new platform capabilities and applications mean MXIE can "host a huge variety of applications from different ecosystems." These include legacy applications, added the supplier, often found in brownfield industrial campuses.

What the newbies do

Siemens MindConnect Software Agent on MXIE apparently helps deliver "seamless connectivity between industrial assets and systems."

With support for multiple industrial data protocols and formats, Nokia continued, Siemens MindConnect Software Agent simplifies the secure transfer of operational data to MindSphere, Siemens' industrial IoT as a service solution. MindSphere is designed to provide Industrial IoT capabilities and applications.

Zscaler Private Access, on the other hand "brings zero trust security" to secure mission critical edge workloads, operational technology and industrial IoT systems on MXIE.

"Unlike VPN solutions," reckoned Nokia, "Zscaler Private Access minimizes the attack surface and risk of lateral threat movement by connecting users, sensors and devices only to the applications they need to do their work."

"By extending our ecosystem, enterprises can focus on their core competencies while leveraging capabilities on the MXIE to simplify, secure and advance their digitalization journey," said Stephan Litjens, VP of Nokia's E-enterprise solutions.

As part of platform enhancement, a new Nokia MXIE developer portal (MXIE depo) was unveiled aimed at facilitating app development, providing an "enhanced developer experience" plus tools to enable "faster and smoother application onboarding."

The MXIE enhancement follows quickly on the heels of Nokia declaring plans to integrate Microsoft Azure Arc capabilities into its industrial edge compute platform.

Growing market

Nokia wheeled out some encouraging market research from Analysys Mason to accompany the announcement of new MXIE partners.

According to Analysys Mason's recent report, "Applications and edge computing for private LTE/5G networks," investment in the enterprise application market is expected to reach around $6 billion by 2030.

Industry 4.0 use cases, such as autonomous robots and augmented and virtual reality, are reckoned to be the main growth drivers.

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— Ken Wieland, contributing editor, special to Light Reading