Finnish vendor Nokia has agreed to sell its device management and service management platform (SMP) businesses to Lumine Group.

The deal is valued at €185 million ($203m), and is expected to close in the first quarter of next year, subject to approval.

As part of the deal, around 500 employees of Nokia's device management and SMP team will transfer over to Lumine Group.

Lumine specializes in acquiring, managing, and building industry-specific software, in telecoms and media.

According to Nokia, Lumine "intends to operate DM and SMP as a standalone business, which will be called Motive."

“Nokia is pleased to enter this agreement with Lumine as another sign of progress in our strategy to focus investment in those areas most important to our business," said Raghav Sahgal, president of cloud and network services, at Nokia.

"Lumine Group has the telecom industry expertise as well as the strategic focus and resourcing to drive the device management and service management platform businesses forward to a stronger future.”

Nokia's device management software lets service providers remotely manage home broadband access devices, as well as IoT sensors and devices from a variety of different vendors.

As for its SMP, its coverage spans more than 150 deployments worldwide and has more than one billion devices under management.

Earlier this year Nokia confirmed it will cut up to 14,000 jobs by 2026.