The smart city agreement will initially focus on the deployment of a proof of concept in Las Vegas
Japan’s NTT Group and Dell Technologies have expanded their existing collaboration agreement to include smart city initiatives.
The partners said they will be collaborating on the first smart city proof of concept with the City of Las Vegas as part of the city’s digital transformation initiative.
NTT Group highlighted that public safety will experience an evolution with future smart city initiatives. The Japanese company believes that smart cities will make full use of next-generation sensors, ultra-high definition cameras and other forward-reaching technologies. Today, video-based situational awareness is a common practice used by local police and fire agencies to proactively alert public safety stakeholders and first responders to emergencies. However, future safety measures require infrastructure and operating models that can analyze and store incoming multimedia data. These requirements are too expensive for most municipalities, limiting the public safety potential of smart city initiatives, NTT said.
The new NTT Group solution is a distributed platform that will create and deploy micro data centers in proximity to sensors around a city. These micro data centers will use advanced analytics for delivering real-time data to public safety agencies. The smart city solution is built on NTT Group’s innovative Cognitive Foundation architecture, which enables remote creation, management and operation of information and communications technology (ICT) resources, from devices and networks to the cloud. The smart city solution will also combine Dell EMC hyper-converged infrastructure and IoT gateways and VMware vCloud NFV platform hosting predictive analytics applications.
Following this initial proof of concept in Las Vegas, NTT Group expects to launch similar smart city initiatives in other cities across the U.S.
“We are delighted to partner with the city of Las Vegas and Dell Technologies to help ensure citizens are safe and critical resources are deployed when needed,” said Jun Sawada, CFO, NTT and CEO, NTT Security. “We’ve brought together NTT Group’s Cognitive Foundation and Dell Technology’s powerful micro data centers to focus on public gathering areas and event venues. This powerful combination facilitates effective and efficient rapid response services,” Sawada said.
“The Innovation District in downtown Las Vegas was designed to be a proving ground for new technologies, and this latest interest by NTT Group and Dell Technologies will continue our efforts to become a smart and connected community,” said Michael Lee Sherwood, director of information technologies, City of Las Vegas. “By leveraging innovative technologies the city will be able to enhance service delivery while helping to keep the public safe and connected.”
In 2016, NTT Data Corp, a subsidiary of NTT Group, acquired Dell’s information technology consulting division for over $3 billion to expand its operation in North America and bolster its services business in areas including healthcare IT, insurance and financial services consulting.
