At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Nokia is set to launch its Worldwide IoT Network Grid (WING, get it). Basically, they want to make managing IoT networking into a service, allowing enterprises to just let Nokia deal with the wide world of service providers to keep all of their devices playing nice no matter where they are.
They’re currently targeting this at transportation, health, and utility verticals. This seems pretty forward thinking on Nokia’s part. IoT is already becoming a security and compliance nightmare, with a lot of the issues tied to sloppy networking. Nokia can’t do much to improve the individual device security, but what they can do is create an enterprise-grade management network to mitigate these issues. This includes robust management, and the ability to connect securely across a variety of network fabrics.
Conceptually this seems right on, we’ll see at MWC about the specifics of the deployment. It’s fascinating to see Nokia reinvent itself. As a company with strong IP but complete market upheaval of their previous handset business, Nokia was a well provisioned company seemingly without a clear company purpose. Seeing them move into perceived market gaps or growth segments tells you where they’re placing their bets for the future.
