Nokia and Kyndryl, the world’s largest IT infrastructure services provider with 4,000 customers, announced an alliance to supply LTE and 5G private wireless networking.

The partnership builds on a private wireless connectivity project that yielded an innovative solution combining Nokia Digital Automation Cloud (DAC) application platform with Kyndryl’s consulting, design, implementation and managed services.

Nokia, which has more than 420 large enterprise private wireless customers, said the solution is designed to support the move to Industry 4.0, which is transforming how companies manufacture and distribute their products by interacting with IoT, cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and other advances to their environments and operations.

The collaboration has already resulted in private LTE and 5G real world deployments and several proof-of-concept (PoC) applications for Dow Inc. to support Industry 4.0-enabled worker safety and collaboration, asset tracking, and other capabilities using a blueprint that it plans to expand and deploy across its sites worldwide.

“As enterprises across every industry are seeking new ways to digitally transform their operations, 5G and edge computing are growing so they can harness the promise of these emerging technologies,” said Paul Savill, global practice leader of Network and Edge computing for Kyndryl.

“By combining Kyndryl’s services expertise and global reach with Nokia’s private wireless and industrial edge computing solutions, we will enable even more organizations to transform their operations, accelerate their digitalization journey and reap the benefits of Industry 4.0,” Chris Johnson, head of the Global Enterprise Business at Nokia, said in a news statement.

Kyndryl, the spin-out of IBM, and Nokia plan to explore and develop new, integrated solutions and services for Edge Cloud, IP networking, Optics, Fixed Access, 4G and 5G Core and Network Operations software technologies that can address  demand for wireless networking to capitalize on the transformational benefits of digitization and automation.