By Editor
The phrase Smart City must be familiar to anyone living in Dubai and the UAE at large. To run a smart city requires the kind of innovative core technology and data analytics that Intel is engaged in today more than ever
In Dubai and other cities in the region, the Smart City concept is in the process of changing the way residents communicate with the government and amongst themselves.
What is happening in Dubai is what is happening on a global scale in what is clearly the third industrial revolution, says Gordon Graylish, General Manager at Enterprise Solutions Sales at Intel. “Morse’s Law and all the changes happening in IT and communications makes it possible all of a sudden to analyse at a scale that could not be imagined a few years ago.” For instance years ago to put a camera and Wi-Fi on a light post for instance would have cost several thousand dollars; today the same would set you back a less than a hundred dollars.
Today, Gordon says, we have the ability to put intelligence all over our environment but the has to care about security and analytics as there’s no use in collecting information unless you do something with it, before visualizing and taking action on the same.
“The Internet of Things (IoT) is going to affect every industry and we see that here already. Within smart cities you have safety, transportation, environment, energy and other aspects of how a smart city operates,” Gordon says. “A smart city is more efficient, traffic flows, helps save energy and very fast to react when something goes wrong. It also gives an opportunity for people with great ideas to work with which is something that did not exist before.”
Security is at the core of the Intel Smart City concept. Within the smart cities or IoT, you have to secure the end points, Gordon explains, because you do not want unauthorized people tampering with valves or interfering with traffic lights for instance. With Wind River, Intel has the capability to provision and secure those end points. With McAfee as well, Intel is able to provide end-point security of the device and also security of the communication between that device and the network. This makes sure that only the right people have the capability to change the rules for the systems and devices, Gordon adds.
The Middle East is in many ways a leader in the Smart Cities concept with a range of projects already in the implementation stage. Gordon concurs, saying that in his conversations with key stakeholders in the region, the talks are about the huge possibilities of applying technology and that ranges across every aspect of the society. “The use of technology to much more efficiently deliver services and to provide these new capabilities is new, brought on by the drastic changes in technology over the last few years.”
SmartStack is one such technology, driven by the increased importance of social media becoming even more crucial together with mobility and the different platform s therein. This is coupled by the expectation of very fast response, agility and analytics. Analytics, Gordon observes, has moved beyond just the traditional information gathering and analysis such as billing information to include location and social data as well as unstructured data. All this put together comprises of a completely new discipline. And finally, cloud.
“We cannot afford not to reduce costs and be more agile and to do that we need to adopt cloud technology,” Gordon explains. All this is happening at a time when the hardware business is getting tighter so the opportunity to deliver more value added services could mean the difference between success and failure.
The modern workforce is driving a lot of the changes in many organizations. When young people join the workforce, they are not necessarily happy with their work environment and enterprises are finding that they need better ways to connect to their younger employees. “So workplace transformation, which is about making a better workplace where people want to collaborate and is friendly to young people as well is something that is really exciting opportunity for the industry because it is something that is now required by almost every company,” Gordon said.
Big Data also offers whole new possibilities. Analytics, Gordon observes, requires specialised knowledge but if one can garner that specialized knowledge, it is an area that is growing and will continue to grow for the next 20 years and is almost limitless in its opportunity.
IoT expands beyond the enterprise and smart cities as opportunities abound to deliver smart homes and the ability to communicate with the gadgets in our homes remotely. “Today you have smart home energy systems making it possible to help people understand their energy use and help conserve energy for instance. In home security, and you are going to see a variety of different capabilities people may want in their homes and there’s an appetite for within the industry for the technology to power these innovations,” Gordon adds.
Intel is known as the world’s largest chip maker, but what is not known is its contribution to other ground breaking technologies. Gordon explains that Intel is one of the most significant contributors to Open Source globally. “Our whole business model is built on understanding how people use technology because we have to think years ahead of what people will need- for instance different kinds of sensors and different technologies,” Gordon says.
Intel in the last year and a half released Quark, a lower cost chip that has enabled the maker community to create at low costs, robots, automation etc. Intel is also today heavily involved in wearables and the technologies that enable other people create solutions around wearables. “The common thread in all this is that Intel works within an eco-system to deliver that technological change. In Big Data we are one of the biggest researchers into open source big data in areas such as Hadoop and Spark and other similar technologies, Gordon explains. “We had our own distribution for Hadoop but we felt it was better to invest give more incentive and focus to the open source movement to accelerate this big data space. Still we’ve continued with all of our research in that space and we see enormous opportunity in Open Source.
Intel Capital, the investment arm of Intel, is investing in the critical technology needed for the Open Source technology to move to the next level. “Our goal is to move technology to where it’s easy to implement and when we do that, we can contribute but based on open standards and ensuring that the eco system can grow and innovate,” Gordon says.
Intel of course works with a lot of technology partners within the IT industry. A big proportion of Linux software today runs on Intel architecture and the company has made a significant contributor to Linux open source to help it develop. Intel is also a famous partner to Microsoft with much of the Microsoft platforms running on Intel. Intel is also growing within the Android ecosystem working together with Google and Android device manufacturers. “Our strategy has been that everything runs best on Intel and it’s clear we’ve fulfilled that,” Gordon concludes.