Nokia is putting more of its back-office systems in the cloud, and the finance, logistics, and order teams behind the scenes are the ones who will feel it first.
The Finnish telecom company has signed a multi-year deal with SAP to shift additional enterprise resource planning work onto SAP S/4HANA, running on Microsoft Azure. The agreement, finalized at the end of 2025, follows SAP’s RISE methodology and covers Nokia’s ERP processes, applications, and underlying data.
It’s the latest step in something Nokia has been chipping away at for a while: folding several separate ERP systems into one SAP S/4HANA setup. The scope touches finance, warehouse management, trade services, logistics, and order fulfillment, areas where fragmented systems tend to slow companies down rather than speed them up.
SAP will run the cloud environment itself, with Microsoft supporting migration and ongoing tuning. Nokia already had parts of its SAP landscape on Azure, so this extends a setup rather than starting one from scratch.
Manos Raptopoulos, who leads customer success for SAP across Europe, APAC, the Middle East, and Africa, said the deal gives Nokia a clearer roadmap and a more integrated toolset for the migration. He also pointed to Nokia’s “clean core” approach, SAP’s term for keeping systems close to standard and avoiding heavy customization that makes future upgrades harder.
Nokia’s Marek Očkay, who oversees IT procurement and vendor management, said the move builds on work already underway with both SAP and Microsoft, aimed at simplifying the company’s ERP footprint.
SAP mentioned that AI features built into its cloud applications will roll out gradually as part of the migration, though neither company specified which features or when. Financial terms weren’t disclosed either.
This ERP engagement sits apart from Nokia’s other Microsoft arrangement, a 2024 deal covering data center routers and switches for Azure across more than 30 countries. The two agreements touch entirely different parts of the business.
Nokia’s AI and cloud segment, meanwhile, has been one of its stronger performers lately. The unit posted 49% growth in the first quarter of 2026 and brought in roughly EUR 1 billion in orders, contributing to a 54% jump in comparable operating profit for the quarter.
