India, key to IBM’s ‘smarter cities’ biz
India is being considered as a ‘major focus area’ by IBM for its smarter planet and cities business. Smarter planet and cities is an area of IBM’s business which involves making townships and cities more cost-efficient. IBM has been actively participating in exchanging dialogues regarding the same with numerous real estate developers, cities as well as state governments.
Over the period of the last two years, the software services company has been accordingly scaling up its capability and has recently set up two ‘client experience labs’ within the country. The main objective of these labs is to encourage development within the fields of specialized domains, data analytics and smarter cities, etc.
According to the CTO at Global Business Services of IBM, there’s a huge influx in the companies pipeline, with India establishing itself as a viable economic model for this new business.
As per the company, investments in India were made not only to set up the labs but also keeping in mind the central growth theme for IBM and its Smarter Planet business initiative.
For instance, recently IBM in collaboration with Wave Group has recently finished work on a greenfield community project, wherein smarter infrastructure was installed by them.
Generally, this is done by our clients since it is a huge cost-driver for them. The inter-connectivity of the system with various departments not only proves cost-effective but also saves time.
Planning for some work with Gurgaon and Chennai next year is on the cards. The two client experience labs that have been established at Bangalore and Delhi serve as a demonstration center point and point where the researchers and consultants can work under one roof to draw out solution for client related problems.
IBM’s idea and the ideology behind a smart city is that citizens desire to be surrounded by innovations and technologies that bring transformation and offer real progress. And, gradually with the passage of time, they expect to be part of the process. That is why, drawing on deep insights from thousands of Smarter Cities projects, IBM is helping power additional cooperative and operating relationships across industries, businesses with the city and lines—and drawing in an ever additional active and engaged citizenry.
Smarter cities drive sustainable economic growth and prosperity for their citizens. It provides the political leaders with the necessary tools to analyze data in order to arrive at better decisions, anticipate problems faster as well as making them capable to proactively resolve them. It also coordinates resources to operate effectively.
