COMMENT
I
oT brings huge opportunities
to businesses in the Middle
East, looking to reduce cost,
generate new revenue opportunities
and enhance customer experience,
according to Dr Muneer Zuhdi,
Director of Solution Line
Management in the Global Digital
Economy Practice at Nokia.
“There are unlimited possibilities for
the usage of IoT. IoT applications
will define future cities and impact
every aspect of people’s lives. These
applications aim to make cities smart,
safe and sustainable. The goal is to
improve the quality of people’s lives,
enhance their safety from natural or
man-made disasters and maximise
the efficiency of the utilisation of
resources,” says Dr Zuhdi.
“The goal is
to improve
the quality of
people’s lives,
enhance their
safety from
natural or man-
made disasters
and maximise
the efficiency of
the utilisation
of resources.”
Nokia supports these IoT applications
with shared, secure and scalable
networks and platforms.
“This enables our customers to
minimise the incremental investment
required to provide IoT applications,
introduce new IoT applications
without disruption to existing services
and ensure the end-to-end security
for the new solutions,” said Zuhdi.
The IoT platform from Nokia,
branded as IMPACT, comes pre-
integrated with several use cases
that improve people’s lives while
making businesses and cities smart,
safe and sustainable.
“Video analytics, for example, utilises
an advanced machine learning
algorithm for crowd and traffic
management, which helps with
public safety. Smart lighting and
fleet management enhances the
sustainability of natural and business
or city resources. Finally, applications
like smart parking achieve multiple
goals in terms of making people work
and live smarter by eliminating time
waste, generating new revenues for
businesses or cities and reducing
road congestions, pollution and fuel
waste,” says Zuhdi.
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INTELLIGENTCIO
Dr Muneer Zuhdi, Director of
Solution Line Management in the
Global Digital Economy Practice
at Nokia
He says IoT has been gaining
great traction in smart cities and
Nokia has been involved in multiple
smart city opportunities across the
MENA region, each with their own
challenges and priorities. “Nokia is in
a unique position to be the trusted
partner for our customers on this
journey. It starts with being able to
utilise the expertise of Bell Labs to
consult with our customers and guide
them on developing a strategy and
plan that is tailored to their market,”
said Zuhdi.
Nokia has all the building blocks for
the smart city end-to-end solution
whether it is over fixed or mobile
network. The solution is highlighted
by the IMPACT IoT platform, which
is a scalable, horizontal and multi-
tenant platform. It enables cities
to securely host applications from
multiple agencies in addition to their
own applications. Nokia also provides
the end-to-end security and services.
“Nokia has also been investing in
building an ecosystem of partners
focusing on different IoT applications
and performing technology and
market trials. This enables us to
evaluate concept and expedite the
delivery of new applications and
use cases while partnering with the
most innovative companies. Nokia
can really help in every phase of this
journey, from strategic planning to
ensuring that the network is built right
first time and optimised for the smart
city applications, to finally providing
access to the most innovative use
cases to cities and their businesses
and residents,” says Zuhdi.
Security always remains a grave
concern, particularly in the wake of
recent ransomware attacks. He says it
is important to evaluate the end-to-
end security for the entire IoT solution,
including devices, network, platform,
cloud and application security. This is
the approach for the Nokia security
products which include endpoints,
gateway, DNS and platform security,
along with certificate management,
security management and identity
and access management.
“The IMPACT IoT platform allows
secured and authenticated collection
of IoT data, which is only distributed
to authorised applications and
end-users. The NetGuard End-point
Security provides a network-based
anti-malware solution combining
monitoring, detection and mitigation
for smart devices and IoT endpoints.
When the IMPACT IoT platform
detects abnormal traffic, it sends a
notification to the application or end-
user and has the capability to update
the firmware to fix a security hole
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