This week, Tech Mahindra, a specialist in digital transformation, consulting and business re-engineering joined hands with the Open University (OU) and Milton Keynes Council to tap the opportunities brought about by the transformation of UK's cities to Smart Cities. The strategic partnership will enable all three organizations to pool their expertise and capabilities to develop bids for both private and Government Smart City projects over the next 5 years. Tech Mahindra expects the Smart City initiatives to drive a market worth £400bn(USD$626bn) globally by 2020. Apart from the Smart City, the partnership also targets initiatives under Low Carbon Management and Connected Ecosystem Solutions. The energy and transportation sectors are expected to be at the forefront of change as the Smart Cities take shape, added the company.
The strategic tie-up between Tech Mahindra, OU and Milton Keynes Council echoes similar joint efforts within the Smart City space. The transformation of today's cities to Smart Cities leverages technologies and solutions from a wide range of verticals and hinges on the ability of the players to pull together the best solutions that can most efficiently and effectively build and run these Smart Cities. With the Internet-of-Things (IoT)/Machine-to-Machine (M2M) becoming a key element in the design of Smart Cities, solutions must be able to cater for the large amount of information that will flow from thousands of nodes throughout these Cities. The ability to transmit, store, process and produce meaningful insights while instituting real-time response to millions of gigabytes of data collected from 'things' such as meters, sensors, cameras and vehicles as well as mobile devices used by people requires capabilities in areas such as big data, analytics, security and real-time technologies.
According to Tech Mahindra, Milton Keynes is one of the 5 cities around UK invited to join a government-led forum for Smart Cities while OU will bring its strong track-record of harnessing the latest technology to benefit its students and business and be its commercial ally in bids for digital projects such as IoT and Driverless Cars. On Tech Mahindra's end, its Digital Enterprise Services unit will leverage seven technologies, namely Networks, Mobility, Analytics, Cloud, Security, Social and Sensors to create Future Proof and Future Ready Solutions for the Smart Cities.
CP Gurnani, MD & CEO, Tech Mahindra
Our unique combination of capabilities in both the Communications and Enterprise domains positions us well in the Digital marketplace. We are excited to be part of this ambitious vision and eager to transform Milton Keynes to a smart city. This partnership brings skills from both academia and the commercial world which will deliver great benefits in furthering research in our increasingly digitized and connected world.
Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research at The Open University, Professor Tim Blackman
The Open University has been leading the way in terms of exploiting the latest technology since we were established over four decades ago. The whole area of Smart Cities is incredibly exciting, so joining forces with an organisation with the capability of Tech Mahindra is a great boost in terms of developing innovative solutions. This will make a real difference to the way people interact with their surroundings - from how we consume energy to the way we get about.
Councillor Pete Marland of Milton Keynes Council
By harnessing the latest technology and drawing on data available to us, Smart Cities have enormous potential to revolutionise the way we live our lives. But more than this, the Smart City industry is predicted to be worth some $400bn by 2020, with the UK aiming to corner 10% of this market. This partnership is great news for the UK, but as one of the country's Smart City pioneers,Milton Keynes stands to be one of the big winners in this exciting and expanding sector.
