EDITOR’S QUESTION
GREGG PETERSEN, REGIONAL DIRECTOR,
MIDDLE EAST, AFRICA AND SAARC,
VEEAM SOFTWARE
The modern Smart City has
a number of attributes that
improve the experience of day-
to-day life. There are innovative
automation opportunities.
There are incredible connectivity
options. There are adaptive
technologies that respond to
changes in weather, traffic,
people flow and more.
Additional cooperation will come
from many city forces combining
efforts to introduce smart city
capability elements in every aspect
of the city experience.
There will be challenges. The
smart city will have to be on
guard for security risks from a
systems and data point of view.
The risk of loss of human life is a
serious possibility as technologies
advance, especially if adjacent
technologies (such as self-driving
cars) become commonplace.
In definition form, a Smart City
functions as an automation
extension of the experience of a
city. Much like an airport is the
first and last impression of a city,
the modern Smart City can be an
extension of that experience for
visitors as well as residents.
The strategic pillars of a Smart
City infrastructure revolve around
data and automation. This is a
classic example in the Internet
of Things where exploding
technology capabilities have
been applied to a practical problem of
dealing with urban challenges.
The infrastructure behind this is
critical: communications networking,
transportation systems and an
intelligent yet adaptive approach to
managing all of these data points.
The capabilities of the smart city
are only getting started, and more
innovation will come. In particular,
look for innovations still to come
around camera technology, wireless
networking and aggregated
data management.
The Veeam approach is to follow the
smart city to its hub: The modern data
centre. The modern data centre will
drive the smart city and provide these
city services to a new level.
www.intelligentcio.com
Aside from the security aspect, the
availability challenge will grow.
There will be no patience for
downtime from these types of
systems, further they will have
strict 24/7 uptime requirements.
The modern data centre that provides
the adaptive automation engine for
the smart city will be critical now
and in the future as new smart city
innovation techniques arrive.
There is one challenge that the smart
city has: Availability, and Veeam
focuses on providing availability for the
Always-On Enterprise specifically in the
modern data centre.
The Smart City has a need for a
comprehensive integration technique.
Specifically around communication.
We’re in a time in the world where
everything can be automated and
interconnected. The integration of
these components will be driven
primarily by both wired and wireless
communication infrastructure
technology advancement.
The CIO will focus on the smart city
modern data centre as a hub to
the experience. Availability, security
and adaptive capabilities will define
how the smart city will change.
The data aspect will also be critical as
this data centre will be a significant
investment. With large investments,
come large expectations for uptime.
My advice is to invest in key
characteristics in the modern data centre
to help meet the need of the smart city.
The key characteristics include leveraging
virtualisation technologies, investing in
modern storage systems and managing
a cloud strategy to meet the needs of
the smart city.
This modern data centre becomes a
platform to manage, scale and adapt.
All the while ensuring high service
levels in the data centre to not ruin the
smart city experience. ¡
INTELLIGENTCIO
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