HPE and PwC Expand Partnership to Smart Cities

12 September 2017 – Today, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced a new project with long-time strategic partner, PwC, to jointly create a Center of Excellence (CoE) in Kolkata, India, to advance development for future cities. Together, HPE and PwC are capitalizing on the Internet of Things (IoT) landscape to create opportunities for city administrators to optimize their assets and provide citizen-centric services.

Recognizing the need for effective connection and exchange of information across a diverse range of devices and applications, PwC will leverage the HPE Universal IoT (UIoT) Platform to support development, testing and management initiatives around future cities. The HPE UIoT Platform will allow PwC to start small and scale the business as demand increases. The CoE will utilize UIoT platform features, including lightweight machine to machine (M2M) support, expanded device management and increased Long Range (LoRa) support. Together, HPE and PwC will enable IoT applications to provide advanced analytics and machine learning innovations.

“HPE and PwC are working together to offer enhanced services, greater security and improved civic engagement to municipalities around the world,” said Nigel Upton, General Manager, Universal IoT Platform, HPE (above). “By combining HPE technology solutions and services with PwC business strategy, process, people and change capabilities, we can help organizations accelerate business and societal transformations, and derive greater value faster from their IoT initiatives. The Center of Excellence in Kolkata is a testament of our joint efforts.”

PwC’s applications and dashboard will be integrated with the HPE UIoT Platform to drive scale, security and speed for the new CoE. Initial use cases that are in development in the CoE span the environment, transportation systems and waste management, and will enable:

• Pollution reduction: Smart poles deployed throughout the city will serve as aggregation points for sensors, cameras and digital display boards collecting environmental data. The environment data the smart devices collect across the city will be used to identify areas subject to heavy pollution.
• Urban mobility: IoT devices will be used to collect traffic data and model traffic condition to further modify the timing cycle for signals based on traffic flow. The collected traffic data will then be integrated with GPS data from the transit management system to provide accurate estimated times of arrival (ETAs) for public buses. Also, sensors will be placed in parking lots to enable real-time tracking of available spots.
• Intelligent waste management: Sensors will be used to track the amount of trash held in garbage bins, helping waste management companies determine where garbage must be collected. Also, the garbage collection vehicles will be equipped with GPS devices and RFID readers to ensure the vehicle takes the best route to full trash bins.

Data gathered from IoT devices and cameras deployed across the city will be used to facilitate pre-emptive governance and improve city operations and emergency response. HPE and PwC are also expanding use cases to other industry verticals including manufacturing and infrastructure.

“Through this project, we are taking our partnership with HPE to the next-level,” said Raman Kalra, Partner, Technology Consulting, PwC India (left). “The burgeoning impact of IoT is going beyond the enterprise and now has large societal implications. Bringing together our industry consulting and technology teams with HPE, we are working on solutions which will bring significant productivity gains to the organizations and societies at large.”

For more information on the UIoT Platform, please visit https://www.hpe.com/us/en/solutions/iot-platform.html.

Source: Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)

Pacific Controls Launches Smart City Platform on Microsoft Azure

22 October 2015  Pacific Control Systems, a leading IoT services provider, and Microsoft today announced the availability of Pacific Controls’ Galaxy 2021, a state-of-the-art Enterprise City Management software platform, built on Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure.

Galaxy 2021 is a future-ready software platform capable of enabling a broad range of smart services focused both on public and private sector. The platform enables the provision of  security, healthcare, hospitality, education, retail, transportation, infrastructure and financial applications as services.

“Our partnership with Microsoft will deliver a global IoT marketplace available for OEMs, Microsoft channel partners and telecom operators to enhance their services, said Dilip Rahulan, Executive Chairman and CEO of PCS (above). "OEMs will be able to enhance their aftermarket services by enabling IOT Services with reduced maintenance costs, deliver continued high performance of equipment and provide actionable business intelligence to improve products and services delivery creating new aftermarket values.”

“By offering a complete package comprising of cloud based IoT platform, big data analytics, extensive range of IoT applications, device integration capabilities, monitoring capabilities, effective business processes and business skills transfer, PCS is enabling telecom operators to seize IoT opportunities in an accelerated mode,” he added.

Samer Abu Ltaif, Regional General Manager of Microsoft Gulf (left), said, “Pacific Controls’ powerful IoT Galaxy 2021 platform together with Microsoft Azure infrastructure offers an unmatchable value proposition. It leverages analytical capabilities of both Galaxy 2021 and Microsoft Data Platform. We are proud of our partnership with PCS and the value it brings to our joint customers.”

The availability of Galaxy 2021 on Microsoft Azure will allow comprehensive Digital Business Platform to enterprises around the world. The unmatched capabilities of Galaxy 2021 to handle big data analytics and integrate variety of machines, equipment and systems combined with Azure’s network of scalable secure private connections, hybrid databases, storage, data residency and encryption features create a very powerful global proposition to build and deploy IoT applications.

Galaxy 2021 is an intelligent, accessible and actionable enterprise-level platform. It will use Azure’s analytics components such as stream analytics, events hub and machine learning services to further strengthen data driven business intelligence components and enable mass deployment of IoT services.

Source: Pacific Controls