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For smart cities, big data drives insight, efficiency

Mobile edge computing, partner ecosystems will be key to the future of smart cities, experts say

AUSTIN, Texas – Tyson Tuttle, CEO of Silicon Labs and moderator of a panel this week at the Smart Cities Innovation Summit, said of smart cities: “The technology is there. That’s not really the biggest challenge. It’s really about taking these technologies and really deploying them out into these new applications.”
That optimistic view was discussed with representatives from AT&T, HPE, Cisco and the city of Austin’s public power utility.
Tom Bradicich, GM and VP of servers and “internet of things” systems for HPE hit on a number of topics as imperatives for smart city success, including security, bandwidth, cost, latency, compliance, data sovereignty and mobile edge computing, the last of which he spoke about in more detail.
“There is a big focus on the edge at our company,” he said, noting HPE’s experience in compute power and data acquisition, “so that insights could be derived at the edge instead of connecting back to the cloud. It leverages our existing assets. We’re shifting those out to the edge to gain these real-time responses and benefits.”
Amr Salem, global managing director of Cisco’s global GTM for smart cities, stressed the need for a robust partner ecosystem that ranges from local political leader buy-in, all the way to application developers.
“One of the things that’s very important is what we call smart regulation. The cities have to think in this journey how to govern differently,” Salem said. “They communicate vertically. That value chain needs to be deconstructed. There has to be a middle layer that allows for any sensor to talk to any application. Any application needs access to data coming from any sensor on the ground.
“With all the data that cities have,” he continued, “there is something called open data to make the data available for the innovators who live in the city, all the small businesses, all the startups. Give them access to the data and they will come up with the applications. This way you’re creating an economy over and above the fact that you’re managing your city more efficiently.”

ABOUT AUTHOR

Sean Kinney, Editor in Chief
Sean Kinney, Editor in Chief
Sean focuses on multiple subject areas including 5G, Open RAN, hybrid cloud, edge computing, and Industry 4.0. He also hosts Arden Media's podcast Will 5G Change the World? Prior to his work at RCR, Sean studied journalism and literature at the University of Mississippi then spent six years based in Key West, Florida, working as a reporter for the Miami Herald Media Company. He currently lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.