Amazon Web Services in September launched a program that aims to connect local and state governments with qualified vendors of smart city technologies. The effort promises to help city leaders buy and implement solutions that work with AWS and each other rather than building their own solutions piecemeal, according to smart city vendors and city leaders.
The Smart City Competency program screens companies that provide smart city solutions to evaluate their technology and business model, ensuring they meet AWS’ customer service standards, Jeff Kratz, general manager of AWS’ worldwide public sector partner program, said in an email. The goal is to eliminate the guesswork around smart city solutions by certifying that the technologies work with AWS before local governments buy them.
“With the AWS Smart City Competency Program, government leaders can quickly and easily identify highly specialized AWS Partners with a demonstrated deep technical expertise and proven track record of customer success within smart city use cases,” Kratz said. “This program allows AWS to curate and develop a community of AWS Partners with scalable smart city offerings.”
Nine companies currently participate in the program, offering a wide range of products and services, including real-time traffic management and data analytics.
Local governments across the U.S. must deal with a wide range of challenges concerning mobility, public safety, economic development and other issues, said David Graham, chief innovation officer for the city of Carlsbad, California, in an interview. “The issues that are facing communities are absolutely daunting,” he said.
But it’s difficult for cities to address those issues alone, given the growing complexity of developing and implementing smart city solutions that use cloud computing, IoT devices, 5G wireless connectivity and other state-of-the-art technologies, Graham said. “The fact is, you're never going to have enough resources to build competency in all of those areas,” he said.
With more and more smart city solutions moving to the cloud, it’s essential that cities can connect their systems and exchange data, Graham said. But vendors sometimes overstate how easily their products and services integrate with other solutions, he said.
The Smart City Competency program can help overcome vendor hype because, unlike other organizations, AWS is in a prime position to know which vendors can use its cloud to offer smart city services, Graham said. That could help city leaders better understand which solutions will meet their needs. “Knowing that upfront can save a lot of time in that discovery process,” Graham said.
The program could also give vendors the ability to understand each other's service and, potentially, design their products to work closer together, he said.
Rubicon, which offers cloud-based waste and recycling solutions for businesses and governments, participated in the program, in part, because some potential buyers want independent certification. “Increasingly, customers and prospective customers are requesting third-party verifications of best-in-class technology solutions like ours,” said Conor Riffle, Rubicon’s senior vice president of smart cities, in an email. “We sought out the AWS Smart City Competency as another important validator of our approach and our product.”
