Cloud services: smarter ICT for smarter cities

Cloud services adoption will accelerate the creation of smarter cities by overcoming organisational inertia and enabling more rapid propagation of innovation. Cities that remain bogged down with outdated ICT capabilities will fall behind their peers and be overlooked by globally mobile investment, businesses, events and citizens.

Historically, governments and city administrations have adopted a ‘craftwork’ approach to ICT. Each agency or city sought to autonomously buy, build and run its own in-house ICT systems and operations, leading to piecemeal development of fragmented, small-scale systems. As ICT systems have become more critical to city operations, the costs and challenges of keeping these systems up to date, resilient and secure have grown.

In parallel, we have seen the evolution of a significant change in the ICT industry towards the creation of large global shared services for computing infrastructure and applications. The emergence of robust and proven enterprise-grade cloud services is providing new options for sourcing ICT capabilities. Cloud services deliver unprecedented economies of scale and are becoming available for an ever-increasing range of applications.

The cloud services delivery model is ideally suited to the challenges of smart cities because it provides a means for cities of any size to benefit from both the economies of scale provided by global shared services platforms as well as to access a growing portfolio of leading-edge ICT applications. On-demand, pay-as-you-go, commercial models mean that applications can be deployed much more rapidly and without the need for capital investment and the implementation of physical ICT infrastructure.

This approach is a major transformation in the logic of ICT, which will offer huge benefits for cities that can make the mindset shift from ‘owning and operating’ dedicated ICT assets to ‘sourcing and orchestrating’ shared ICT services.

One of the main benefits of cloud services is that they combat organisational inertia. Because cloud services already exist and can be assessed and tested prior to purchase, they give executives an increased awareness of the art-of-the-possible and also an increased sense of confidence that a project can actually be delivered as planned.

The global scale and transparency of the market-leading cloud service providers is also a powerful force for the propagation of smarter city innovations. A cloud service created for one city can very quickly be visible to, and available to, many cities. As the market matures, and as governments and cities increase their adoption of cloud services, we will see the creation of portals, hubs and app stores focused on smart city applications and services. These will become vibrant focal points for the dissemination and sharing of thought leadership, innovative solutions and ecosystems of advisers and service providers.

Smarter cities will deploy cloud services to innovate more quickly, adding value to their natural geographical and cultural assets and developing new ways to achieve superior economic, social and environmentally sustainable growth. Cities that remain bogged down with 20th-century technology, with piecemeal, fragmented systems and data, risk falling behind their peers and being overlooked by globally mobile investment, businesses, events and citizens.