Nokia inks deal with Avanade to get more Lumia devices and services into large enterprises

Smartphone and mobile services firm Nokia has struck a deal with Avanade, a business technology solutions and managed services provider that has long prided itself for its Microsoft product expertise (and was actually co-founded by the Redmond software giant over a decade ago).

Under the terms of the deal, Avanade will create and deliver packaged Windows Phone 8-powered Nokia Lumia devices as well as related applications and services to large enterprise customers.

Often termed BYOD (for ‘bring your own device’), employees are increasingly bringing personally-owned mobile devices to their workplace, including laptops, tablets and obviously smartphones.

But, as Avanade argues, greater use of smart devices for business systems also requires the development of specialized applications to enable tightly secure integration.

Avanade and Nokia thus plan to deliver packaged offerings to large enterprise customers, combining the former’s application development and system integration solutions, Microsoft technology and Nokia’s Lumia products and related services.

Together with Accenture, Avanade and Nokia will also provide business customers with Windows Phone and Microsoft infrastructure expertise to support the pilot adoption and testing of Nokia Windows Phone 8 devices through to production deployments.

For the record: Avanade is majority-owned by Accenture and was co-founded by both Accenture and Microsoft back in 2000.

Late last year, Avanade acquired Seattle technology company Azaleos, a provider of remotely-managed services for Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and Lync that basically allows organizations to remotely monitor and manage email, collaboration and communications systems.

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