Cisco and AGT have come together to provide a system of analytics technologies to a number of cities, taking a step into the 'smart cities' business next to IBM.
IBM has been the source of most of the narrative on 'smart cities', where public services and systems are all linked and connected over a central network. Now an alliance between Cisco and Swiss analytics company AGT plans to develop its own version of the tech and bring it to 30-50 cities worldwide over the next five years.
AGT has previously worked with city-spaces before, helping Singapore leverage data and technology efficiently while managing its ever-constrained construction space. The partnership with Cisco aims to take advantage of the Internet of Things to solve challenges that the governing bodies of today's cities face.
Bigger than social media
Although the project apes IBM's Smarter Cities project in many ways, the founder of AGT, Mati Kochavi, stated that the two are fundamentally different. The Cisco/AGT partnership aims to use sensors and data already in place rather than install new systems.
Kovachi said: "I believe when we enter the Internet of Things we're talking about another layer of information that's bigger than social media," Kochavi said. "We don't want to wake up in five years and find out again that we should have done things differently."
The partnership is yet to reveal where it will begin the new rollout but the first client city is due to be announced in around two months time.
Via CNN
