Next-generation Smart City IoT Platforms leveraging Standards, Open Source, and AI to enable Sharing, Service, and Cognitive Paradigms

In a very crowded IoT platform ecosystem, multiple vendors are targeting the smart cities vertical with optimized and dedicated solutions and vying for dominance in this very promising segment, according to a recent study by ABI Research, a market-foresight advisory firm providing strategic guidance on the most compelling transformative technologies.

While established players like Cisco and Verizon excel in the width and depth of functionality offered across the value chain and vertical segments, others like IBM and Bosch are embracing next-generation technologies like AI, blockchain, and sensor data crowdsourcing to enable a new urban economy based on sharing, service, and cognitive business models for smart city services like community-based parking, automated surveillance cams, and blockchain-enabled freight tracking.

“But this is not the whole story. To really enable holistic smart city solutions and manage dynamic technology lifecycles, city governments increasingly rely on vendor-agnostic standardized and/or open source platforms,” says Dominique Bonte, Vice President End Markets at ABI Research. “InterDigital’s Chordant’s adherence to the oneM2M standard and FIWARE’s open source API approach offer the promise of flexible, pay as you grow, future-proof solutions enabling yet unknown applications and services. Standardization organizations like ETSI are also actively preparing smart city data and platform standards.”

However, many generic, horizontal IoT platforms offered by carriers, network infrastructure vendors, and other suppliers are also targeted at the smart cities vertical but often lack specific functionality required by the public sector. At the other end of the spectrum, city platforms built around specific verticals such as energy, buildings, utilities, or transportation are offered by players like Itron, Siemens, Schneider Electric, GE, and Hitachi. These players are typically focused on OT rather than IT.

Finally, product or technology specific smart city platforms include solutions built around cloud technology (Amazon / AWS, IBM, Microsoft), IT (SAP, NEC, HPE), AI surveillance (NVIDIA), connectivity modules (Telit), cellular connectivity (carriers), and smart lighting (Philips).

Ultimately, no single platform will be able to offer all features for all verticals in a smart city environment characterized by a “platform of platforms” approach, with open, interoperable platforms interacting with and complementing each other in a “system of systems” constellation and open ecosystem.

These findings are from ABI Research’s Smart City Platforms and Standards report. This report is part of the company’s  Smart Cities research service, which includes research, data, and Executive Foresights.

About ABI Research

ABI Research provides strategic guidance for visionaries needing market foresight on the most compelling transformative technologies, which reshape workforces, identify holes in a market, create new business models and drive new revenue streams. ABI’s own research visionaries take stances early on those technologies, publishing groundbreaking studies often years ahead of other technology advisory firms. ABI analysts deliver their conclusions and recommendations in easily and quickly absorbed formats to ensure proper context. Our analysts strategically guide visionaries to take action now and inspire their business to realize a bigger picture. For more information about ABI Research’s forecasting, consulting and teardown services, visionaries can contact us at +1.516.624.2500 in the Americas, +44.203.326.0140 in Europe, +65.6592.0290 in Asia-Pacific or visit www.abiresearch.com.