Top 20 Smart City Solution Companies - 2019

Smart Cities will undergo a significant re-think in 2019 and will continue to evolve in 2020. As smartphones reach peak saturation and the Internet of Things (IoT) becomes a regular part of our lives, the smart city movement will spread to small towns and rural communities as the technologies that drive it grow more self-contained. Engineers worldwide are turning to new technology ‐ such as the Cyber-Physical Systems, 5G, and data analytics searching for new approaches and solutions that will improve city transportation, water, and waste management, energy usage, and a host of other infrastructure issues that underpin the operation of cities and the lifestyle of urban citizens.

Smart city leaders will seek to decentralize data centers, technologies, and decision making for a more human-centric approach to serving citizens. There will be a growing need for instant interoperability among devices and platforms as the IoT connects more diverse technologies to ever-growing network fabrics. As community-wide Wi-Fi and IoT technologies become commonplace and affordable, there will be widespread deployment of low-cost structures (like community-wide networks of sensors and cameras) to improve safety and response times.

Cloud computing has had a significant influence on the development of smart cities, affecting the way cities manage and deliver services and enabling a broader set of players to enter the smart city market. Smart cities, by their very nature, generate significant amounts of data in their daily operations. Coupled with technologies like Hadoop/HDFS, Spark, Hive, and a plethora of proprietary tools, it is now possible for cities to harness big data and analytical tools to improve the efficiency of city operations and services. There is a strong drive toward more intuitive processes, including the increased use of machine learning to gather and analyze a community’s data by moving away from traditional networking to more intuitive, software-defined WAN (SD-WAN), Cisco DNA for Cities, and intent-based networking.

Companies have traditionally built out specific, siloed applications like surveillance cameras, smart lighting or traffic sensors, but in 2019 they will start to adopt a longer view and think about building a necessary infrastructure to support all smart city applications. The advent of 5G networks will not only bring faster speeds but also much denser small cell deployments due to distance limitations with millimeter wave technology and ultra-low latency applications at the edge. 5G will foster new smart city applications like parking, smart meters, public safety (surveillance cameras), traffic management, 5G small cell densification, waste management, and coordination of departments for emergency services.

Smart city technology spending reached $80 billion in 2016 and is expected to grow to $135 billion by 2021, according to a report from the International Data Corporation (IDC). Cities will succeed if they invest in developing a smart city roadmap and strategy tailored to best address their priorities, or use cases and allow for a smart city to scale. This will require a high level of innovating thinking and collaboration between different agencies, service providers, procurement/contracts offices, and community stakeholders.

This edition of CIOReview features companies that are at the forefront of offering smart city solutions. CIOReview’s editorial board has assessed and shortlisted some of the most prominent organizations in the industry such as Verra Mobility, Transit Wireless, Miller Electric Company, Kastle, Innovative Technology Holdings, and AppFusions. We present to you – “20 Most Promising Smart City Solution Providers – 2019”.