Google LLC has landed a major customer in the shape of the Finnish telecommunications giant Nokia Corp., which said today it’s migrating its entire on-premises information technology infrastructure onto Google Cloud, including all of its data centers, servers and software applications.

Nokia said the five-year strategic collaboration with Google reflects its own operational shift to a “cloud-first IT strategy” that aims to enhance collaboration and innovation among its own employees and speed up delivery of its services to customers. The company added that it expects to see immediate benefits from the move by lowering its energy consumption costs and eliminating the need to buy new hardware.

Ravi Parmasad, Nokia’s vice president of global IT infrastructure, said the company is moving to Google’s cloud as part of a “digital transformation path that is about fundamentally changing how we operate and do business.”

The migration to Google’s cloud is no small undertaking, but Nokia said it has worked with Google to create a highly customized approach involving systems integrators and specialist engineers that should enable it to happen within 18 to 24 months. The plan also takes into account the need to minimize any disruption to Nokia’s business.

Nokia said that as part of the deal it will also use several of Google Cloud’s compute, networking and storage services to power its business operations going forward. It didn’t name any specific services, but said that it expects these to help it “accelerate cost optimization, efficiency and operational reliability.”

“We look forward to bringing our leading networking, data analytics, AI/ML, and other technologies to empower Nokia to deliver a cloud-first strategy and better serve its customers,” said Google Cloud President Rob Enslin. “We are excited to help Nokia revamp its IT infrastructure with our backbone network and our approach to data security, using advanced software-defined networking.”

Nokia is the latest in a string of customer wins for Google Cloud. In August, the company announced that Major League Baseball had moved its enterprise data warehouse from its Teradata-based on-premises servers to Google BigQuery. One month before that, it added three new customers, including the Indian information technology services giant Wipro Ltd., soft drinks maker Keurig Dr Pepper Inc. and French telco Orange SA.

Image: Google