“Smart city” priorities and use cases are all over the place. Nonethless, IDC expects spending to accelerate over the 2016-2021 forecast period, reaching $45.3 billion in 2021.
So, what is a smart city and what does it have to do with cloud computing? Everything.
Smart cities are cities that have embraced both the internet of things and the cloud technology to do what cities should do better. This includes intelligent traffic and transit management, surveillance such as body cams and GPS locators for police, intelligent water and power usage, and anything else that is automated and uses cloud-based procedural computing, cognitive computing, data retention, and analysis.
The real advantage of using mostly public clouds to create and run smart cities is not the capabilities of the various clouds to host basic compute and storage in support of city automation. It’s the ability to reuse common smart city services across cities, services that will be sold and managed by the public cloud providers.
The fundamental larger role of public cloud providers is to create sets of cloud services that will deliver best practices via services to all cities that want to become smart cities. The public cloud providers will essentially be the vehicle for sharing this technology. And they need cities to help define those services.
The larger piece of the puzzle is cost reduction. There is no real reason to become a smart city unless it’s going to reduce city operations costs, as well as deliver citizen services better than you did before. In other words, it’s not enough to become “smart”; you need to spend tax dollars in more effective ways.
Some cities are now successfully evolving into smart cities, paving the way for other city governments to follow. Of course, this is going to be an evolutionary process, with aspects of automation showing up at different times. After all not much happens fast with city governments.