On December 21, 2018, German companies SAP and Software AG announced a collaboration for the development of an open smart city platform. The platform will include the capabilities of Internet of Things (IoT), analytics, and Artificial Intelligence (AI), and will help the cities, communities, and administrative districts to design and develop their own network and intelligent services. The platform has been developed in accordance with the standards of the European Union’s Open Urban Platform initiative. The collaborative use of the open platform will ensure better data control and efficiency.
MarketsandMarkets™ View Point:
Balaji Sreedhar – Associate Vice President : ICT Practice – Consulting & Strategy, at MarketsandMarkets™, shares his Point of View as mentioned below:
Smart cities market fueled by network infrastructure and enabling technologies
Successful implementation of smart city projects majorly depends on telecommunications infrastructure as well as its usage for connectivity and real-time data flow. Every city needs to ensure that communications platforms are established and accessible to realize the concept of smart cities in an open and resource-efficient manner. In addition, augmented adoption of enabling technologies such as IoT, AI, cloud computing, and analytics in recent years, has enabled better connectivity, resulting in complete remodeling of the smart cities ecosystem.
According to a report by MarketsandMarkets™, the global smart cities market is expected to grow from USD 307.97 billion in 2018 to USD 717.22 billion by 2023, at a CAGR of 18.4% during the forecast period. Increased environmental concerns, growing demand for advanced technologies such as IoT and 5G, and increased technology spending by developing economies are generating a number of opportunities for the smart cities market. The investment is huge for smart citizen services to ensure proper education, healthcare, and public safety services.
“Global Smart Cities Market: Focus Areas (2018)”
Source: MarketsandMarkets™ Smart Cities Market Report
Open smart city platforms are expected to generate huge opportunities in developed as well as developing economies. With the increasing initiatives for smart cities, the requirement for efficient implementation is elevating, in order to minimize the cost. Especially in the developing economies, the projects for smart transportation and smart citizen services require a huge investment to make the legacy infrastructure technology ready. For instance, the Government of India has proposed 100 smart cities in the next few years. Furthermore, the Government of China has announced its third phase of smart cities development initiative, covering almost 590 cities across the country. The use of open platforms will reduce the cost consumption and will help in developing and deploying smart city solutions and services with better monitoring and informed decisions.
Even in the developed regions, reduction in energy consumption and concern over proliferation of environmental wastes are driving the technology adoption for real-time information flow. Europe is at the forefront of the green building technology, fully backed by government subsidies. The government of Germany has subsidized EUR 1,500 million for green building installation and renovation. Freiburg’s building was designed in a way to use not more than 65 kilowatts/hour of heating energy per square meter per year. Thus, several global smart city projects, including Singapore, Copenhagen, and Amsterdam include projects to fully optimize energy use and achieve 100% carbon neutrality in the next 5 to 10 years.
Conclusion
Open smart city platforms will reduce the complexity by providing single point access for several smart city components such as real-time messaging, grievance and compliance management, and notifications to both government and citizens in order to minimize the delay in decision-making. In addition, open smart city platforms will also reduce capital expenditure (CAPEX) of government and administrative bodies. Therefore, governments across different regions will be keen to increase smart city initiatives, thereby opening new revenue opportunities for these vendors.