Nokia has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Japanese multinational Marubeni Corporation to develop, test, and deliver Internet of Things services to its enterprise customers.

The partnership will deploy Nokia’s WING IoT network grid. It comes just a matter of days after Nokia announced its partnership with Tele2.

Marubeni provides a range of business services to clients across five industries: food and consumer products; chemical and forest products; energy and metals; utilities and transportation; and industrial machinery.

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Nokia WING helps Marubeni go global

Nokia WING’s all-in-one managed IoT service combines a global IoT core network with connectivity management and functions such as billing, analytics, and data security.

Marubeni will work closely with Nokia to provide IoT services to its enterprise customers around the world. Services are expected to include fleet management, industrial machinery monitoring, and international logistics.

The Japanese corporation’s subsidiary, Marubeni Wireless Communication, offers mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) operations across Japan. Its expertise in this space is expected to allow Nokia to tailor its IoT offering to local Japanese requirements.

According to a statement from both parties, the Nokia WING distributed core network will “enable Marubeni Corporation to become a truly global IoT service provider, providing low-latency services to their multinational enterprise customers.”

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Defragmenting global IoT

Koji Kabumoto, executive officer of the ICT, Logistics & Healthcare division at Marubeni Corporation, sees the agreement with Nokia as the first step toward driving new growth opportunities for its customers.

“We are looking forward to this mutually complementary relationship with Nokia, to enter a new era of the IoT market in Japan and globally,” he said. “Nokia WING is a unique service, and we are excited about the prospect of helping our customers easily deploy IoT services to drive new growth opportunities.”

Nokia’s head of WING, Ankur Bhan, pointed to the importance of Marubeni’s experience in the Japanese MVNO market. “We are pleased to be working with Marubeni Corporation, a leader in MVNO in Japan and the industrial IoT market globally,” he said.

“Since its foundation, part of Marubeni Corporation’s company credo has been innovation. With this agreement, both companies will deliver truly innovative global solutions to enterprise companies and customers. We will be defragmenting global IoT deployments by leveraging Nokia’s WING distributed global IoT network.”

Internet of Business says

Many of the latest and biggest partnerships in the IoT space this year have been between Asia and the West, including Vodafone’s recent agreement with China Mobile for mutual market access.

Yet more evidence that the Internet of Things will eventually be the Internet of Everything: technology barriers are falling and collaboration is growing, even as political rhetoric becomes more insular in some parts of the globe.

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