Modernizing a Global Data Center Network Without Downtime: Nokia IT’s Automation-First Journey
Scott Robohn (Solutional) and Tom Hollingsworth (Tech Field Day, The Futurum Group) introduce a multi-part video and blog series detailing how Nokia’s IT team modernized a global, brownfield data center network while keeping mission-critical applications online. They set the stage for the series by outlining the operational pain points that accumulated over years of organic growth: inconsistent designs, heavy manual work, limited rollback, and disconnected tools.
Scott and Tom describe how Nokia IT defined clear, outcome-driven requirements and adopted a NetOps operating model built on Nokia SR Linux and Nokia Event-Driven Automation (EDA). Key architectural decisions included a leaf-spine fabric, API-first operations, infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines, and the use of a digital twin to model, test, and validate changes before deployment. The video previews the live migration strategy used to transition workloads without disruption and highlights early results, including an 80% reduction in incidents during the migration pilot. Beyond technology, the discussion emphasizes the importance of data quality, communication, and operational discipline in delivering resilient, automation-driven outcomes.
Watch Nokia’s presentation at Tech Field Day’s Networking Field Day 39 here.
This video is number 1 in a series of 6. To see the other posts, visit: https://techstrong.tv/videos/modernizing-the-data-center-nokia-its-netops-playbook
