The Nokia data center portfolio is anchored by our flagship SR Linux network operating system (NOS). This fully open NOS offers top-quality software, including our market-leading routing stack and the world's most complete implementation of northbound APIs and streaming interfaces.

So why did we announce broader support for the SONiC NOS?

Our entire data center strategy hinges on two immutable beliefs. First, good solutions start with good architecture. Second, customers ought to have choice and flexibility in the way they pursue their ambitions.

The entire open networking or disaggregation trend is fundamentally based on architectural separation of components. In most cases, it's separation of hardware and software, but modularity is a big driver of things like microservices, virtual form factors and digital twins.

While this space can feel novel or disruptive, it's basically just good architecture. If you build things modularly, the decision on how to package and sell them is ultimately a function of market demand.

And if our goal is to enable our customers to innovate on their terms rather than dictating innovation on our terms, then supporting SONiC on our hardware is a natural outcome of a fairly straightforward strategy. It's really as simple as that.

So what are we doing with SONiC?

There is a part of the market that’s convinced that choice and freedom directly depend on a vendor-agnostic software platform. We are telling customers with a loud voice that Nokia stands for choice and flexibility, and we are meeting them where they are.

For those indoctrinated in the open-source SONiC NOS approach, this means they can buy a solution from us when they previously might not have considered it. For those curious about SONiC, it means they can purchase hardware that supports their speculative interests and evaluate whether SONiC or SR Linux is the best fit for their environments.

We take flexibility and choice a step further by extending management and operations for SONiC to our multivendor, intent-based Event-Driven Automation (EDA) platform. This gives customers the hardware and the operations they need to deploy in production environments—and, importantly, the ability to switch directions should they need or want to.

To be clear, SONiC is not some engineering oddity within Nokia. We are active participants in the SONiC community, and have made notable contributions such as chassis-based SONiC, an ARM port and small footprint optimizations. Our commitment is clear enough that Microsoft recently extended its commitment to our data center portfolio and our existing collaboration around SONiC.

Ultimately, our adoption of SONiC is a key step towards our broader objectives, which are to provide data center networking infrastructure—hardware, software, transport and operations—in a form factor that can help drive human error to zero. We believe that the right combination of quality products and reliable operations is a difference-maker for our customers. And by expanding our support for SONiC, we are making it clear that these benefits should apply equally to everyone, regardless of where their strategy is leading them.

Visit the Nokia community SONiC webpage to find out how we bring an open-source NOS together with advanced hardware and leading-edge automation to give data center teams greater choice and flexibility.