Forrester

DESCRIPTION

Interest in "smart cities" has taken off like wildfire. Cities of all sizes navigate their challenges — growing demand for new constituent services within increasingly constrained budgets — and try to identify potential solutions to their cities' woes. But, the combination of critical urban pain points and vendor enthusiasm to address them has resulted in a proliferation of point solutions: emergency response integration, traffic congestion alleviation, waste and water management, smart buildings, smart grids, etc. The key to being a truly smart city, however, lies in bringing these systems together, creating an integrated approach to city governance as a whole.

City leaders are embracing governance tools and Forrester expects adoption to grow. The opportunity for tech vendors and service providers lies in facilitating "smart governance" through appropriate products and business models. The opportunity lies in offering cloud and shared services models for business applications, providing integration and cloud management services, and generally facilitating the coordination and collaboration among city departments and city leadership.

Agenda:

• Interest in "smart cities" grows, but obstacles remain.
• Cities will adopt enterprise approaches to the back office.
• Cities will create (and enable) more accessible citizen services.
• Technology providers will develop tools and services for smart city governance.
• Vendors will provide integrated and integrate-able smart city governance tools.
• The key to governance — and the opportunity for IT providers — is in integration and services.

Vendors mentioned: Accenture, Atos Origin, Deloitte, HP, Infor, IBM, Living PlanIT, Logica, Metricstream, Microsoft, Oracle, Orange Business Services, SAP, Screampoint, Siemens SIS, Steria.