Nokia sees deeper ties, alignment with Qatar’s digital goals

The president of Nokia’s Cloud and Network Services has underscored the strong alignment between Qatar’s digital agenda and Nokia’s innovation roadmap, signalling the potential for an expanded partnership.

In an exclusive interview with Gulf Times, Raghav Sahgal lauded the significant strides made by Qatar in its digitalisation journey, saying, “Qatar has done a great job in terms of its digital journey and its commitment towards this strategy, making the country a digital society.”

Sahgal emphasised that Nokia’s global expertise could play a significant role in shaping the digital future of Qatar, which continues to position itself as a tech hub in the Gulf region.

According to Sahgal, Nokia’s role in Qatar's digital transformation extends beyond providing network infrastructure. “We are driving digitisation not only in the networks itself,” Sahgal explained, adding that Nokia has developed software to address key automation aspects and connect infrastructure to the broader ecosystem.

Sahgal also underscored Nokia’s crucial role during the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, saying the company was a “very big partner” for all its customers in the country and that it “played a great part” in delivering a good digital experience during the international sporting event.

Asked about artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on Nokia-Qatar ties, Sahgal noted that the company is actively working on both classical AI and generative AI solutions. “We are driving that aggressively into the market,” he said, emphasising the responsible use of these technologies.

“Classical AI is already in play, while generative AI is a new kind of innovation coming across globally, but we play in both of these spaces. While generative AI is still in incubation, with its use cases being developed, we believe that this technology is here to stay. It will continue to get better, and we have to embrace it responsibly.

Regarding smart city development, Sahgal highlighted how Nokia’s 5G solutions could contribute to Qatar’s efforts. “5G will play a good role in smart cities and the industrial and enterprise side, and eventually on the consumer side, as well,” he noted.

Looking ahead, Sahgal sees potential synergies between Nokia’s cloud solutions and Qatar’s growing data centre industry. “We have solutions in Nokia that directly address data centres,” he said, adding that Nokia could contribute both technologies for data centres and innovations in areas like generative AI.

On cybersecurity, Sahgal emphasised the importance of secure autonomous operations in digital infrastructure. Citing Nokia’s NetGuard Cybersecurity Dome portfolio, Sahgal stressed that the company “has invested heavily in looking at security on an end-to-end basis of a network.”

On the potential for future collaboration, Sahgal underscored the alignment between Qatar’s and digital agenda Nokia’s innovation roadmap, saying, “There’s a general convergence of strategy, which is what makes this very useful for us in terms of driving our strategy.”