This week’s Smart City roundup features some fresh ways in which Big Data is becoming the driving force behind smart building adoption, Cisco’s blueprint plans for smart cities, and a dedicated platform for enterprise apps and devices.

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Big Data will drive smart building adoption

Frost & Sullivan Inc. released a new report entitled “Big Data as an Enabler for Smart Buildings”, which analyzes how Big Data is playing a huge role in smart building adoption. According to the report, Big Data provides an open platform that enables integration of data from various systems.

The report also stated that urbanization, the connectivity and convergence of smart technologies, and communication between smart devices are the three big trends that will drive the development of the smart buildings industry.

“The ongoing convergence of operating technology and IT indicates that key technology advancements will gather pace in the fields of data analytics, cloud services and IoT,” said Frost & Sullivan Energy and Environmental Research Analyst Anirudh Bhaskaran. “Big data, especially, will emerge as a more valuable delivery model owing to affordable upfront costs and lower resource usage.”

Cisco’s smart city blueprint

Cisco Systems Inc. has unveiled its smart city plan which has the potential to be the basis of all other smart city projects. The premise of the plan is based on the Internet of Everything movement, showcasing how connected education, connected healthcare, smart buildings, connected transport and smart parking can transform the way cities and communities are designed, built and renewed. The goal is to ensure economic, social and environmental sustainability.

India seems to be a region of great interest for Cisco, with plans to create 100 smart cities in the country, according to Chief Globalisation Officer Wim Elfrink. “The ‘Cisco Smart City’ […] symbolises what digitisation of a country means for the future of work, education, healthcare and the electronic delivery of citizen services,” Elfrink said.

New platform to accelerate enterprise apps & devices

End-to-end mobile backend provider Kii Corp.recently announced the availability of its dedicated platform that allows the enterprise to run backend capabilities for their apps and connected devices in their own data centers, or as a hosted cloud service with Kii.

The dedicated platform is designed to meet the needs of both the enterprise and device manufacturers by allowing them to create and run high-performance mobile apps while maintaining control over app deployment, delivery, and data. The dedicated platform also gives users the ability to more efficiently meet regulatory and security requirements.

Three key features of the dedicated platform include support for companies with regulatory or policy guidelines that do not permit off-premise hosting; offer speed, security, and flexibility to support a growing enterprise; and environment isolation that makes sure data are not shared across customers.

“With our new dedicated platform, enterprise businesses now have the choice to pick the right deployment option that best fits their needs — multi-tenant, dedicated, or the combination of two — for their mobile and IoT initiatives, allowing them to focus on solving real business challenges,” said Masanari Arai, CEO of Kii.

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