Nokia and Microsoft Partner to Accelerate Network Automation with Unified Data Foundation

Nokia and Microsoft have partnered to accelerate network automation through a unified data foundation, aiming to enhance telecom providers' ability to scale autonomous, AI-driven operations. The collaboration integrates Nokia Data Suite with Microsoft Fabric, providing a multi-vendor, cross-domain solution that simplifies complex data integration and reduces the time required to prepare and operationalize data.

According to Vivek Jaiswal, Senior Vice President of Autonomous Networks at Nokia, the partnership is designed to bring the right data, at the right time, to telecom operators worldwide.

The new solution enables telecom providers to access high-quality, trusted data in minutes, rather than weeks. This streamlined process is crucial for operators looking to implement AI-driven operations more efficiently. Nokia Data Suite, which provides prebuilt, reusable telco data products with glass-box data quality controls and telco-specific semantic modeling, ensures transparency, explainability, and trust in AI-driven decisions.

Microsoft Fabric, on the other hand, offers a unified data platform with OneLake storage, analytics tools, and AI-native apps such as Microsoft 365 Copilot, Foundry, and Power BI. By combining these capabilities, operators can move from fragmented data environments to a more autonomous, scalable model. Nokia’s data products can be provisioned on demand and seamlessly combined with Microsoft Fabric’s enterprise, IT, and third-party data sources, enabling broader AI use cases such as automated root-cause analysis and closed-loop operations to improve service quality and efficiency.

The solution is designed for multi-vendor, cross-domain telecom environments and supports hybrid and cloud infrastructures, including on-premises deployments. This flexibility allows operators to meet regulatory requirements while advancing AI and automation strategies globally. It also addresses a key barrier to AI adoption in telecom networks by reducing the time required to prepare and operationalize data, a process that can take several weeks when performed by traditional methods.

Silvia Candiani, Corporate Vice President of Worldwide Telco & Media at Microsoft, emphasized the importance of trusted data, strong governance, and scalable platforms.

Initial use cases for the solution include autonomous VoNR (voice over new radio) assurance, where agents identify anomalies, run root-cause analyses, and recommend actions with 360-degree observability (network, service, and subscriber). Another use case is geo-experience, which uses AI and machine learning to map RAN (radio access network) subscriber sessions to precise geographic locations, identify users experiencing degraded radio performance, and pinpoint coverage or capacity hotspots. By correlating subscriber, network, and RF data, this capability uses agents to analyze the root causes of RAN issues and provides actionable recommendations to improve the experience of both network-sliced and standard 4G/5G users.

Predictive maintenance and fault management are also supported, where agents analyze historical and real-time data to anticipate network issues before they impact customers. AI-driven operational assistants act as copilots for network engineers, providing contextual insights, recommended actions, and automated workflow execution across complex, cross-domain environments. As a result, operators can achieve higher levels of network autonomy while maintaining human oversight, enabling AI to take on increasingly complex operational responsibilities within clearly defined governance boundaries.

This collaboration builds on Nokia and Microsoft’s existing partnership in cloud, data, AI, and cybersecurity, supporting development and go-to-market activities for telecom customers. The solution is now available, with ongoing expansion of autonomous network use cases and customer deployments.