Nokia grabs DCI network contracts from Tencent and Baidu

The Finland-based telecom giant Nokia is abuzz with several contract announcements this week. After announcing its contract deal with China Unicom, Nokia has announced that it has been awarded two contracts with China-based webscale giants, Tencent and Baidu, for data center interconnect (DCI) network solutions.

Tencent and Baidu will strengthen their already strong relationship with Nokia to build out their software-defined DCI infrastructure, providing them with the dynamic, massive-scale optical bandwidth needed to support growing cloud operations in China and the US.

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. Connecting their very large data centers 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.

Commenting on this development, Markus Bochert, President of Nokia Greater China, said that his company's leading DCI product portfolio and technology innovations in photonics and SDN controllers are key, as well as its strong R&D capabilities, globalized supply chain, and highly responsive service teams. These latest contracts with Baidu and Tencent consolidate Nokia's presence in the webscale market in China, which Bochert confidently says will continue to flourish in the coming years.