Organizations across the world are investing in the digital
transformation to remain relevant to their customers and survive
disruption. The Internet of Things (IoT) is one element in this
transformation journey and has the potential to transform every
industry, even traditional ones.
According to Dr Muneer Zuhdi, Director of Solution Line Management in
the Global Digital Economy Practice at Nokia, IoT brings huge
opportunities to businesses in MENA, looking to reduce cost, generate
new revenue opportunities and enhance customer experience.
“There are unlimited possibilities for the usage of IoT. IoT
applications will define future cities and impact every aspect of
people’s lives. These applications aim to make cities smart, safe, and
sustainable. The goal is to improve the quality of people’s lives,
enhance their safety from natural or man-made disasters, and maximise
the efficiency of the utilisation of resources,” he says.
Nokia supports these IoT applications with a shared, secure, and
scalable networks and platforms. “This enables our customers to minimise
the incremental investment required to provide IoT applications,
introduce new IoT applications without disruption to existing services,
and ensure the end-to-end security for the new solutions.
” The IoT platform from Nokia, branded as IMPACT, comes
pre-integrated with several use cases that improve people’s lives while
making businesses and cities smart, safe, and sustainable. “Video
analytics, for example, utilises an advanced machine learning algorithm
for crowd and traffic management, which helps with public safety. Smart
lighting and fleet management enhances the sustainability of natural and
business or city resources. Finally, applications like smart parking
achieve multiple goals in terms of making people work and live smarter
by eliminating time waste, generating new revenues for businesses or
cities, and reducing road congestions, pollution, and fuel waste,” says
Dr Zuhdi.
He says IoT has been gaining great traction in Smart Cities and Nokia
has been involved in multiple Smart City opportunities across the MENA
region, each with their own challenges and priorities. “Nokia is in a
unique position to be the trusted partner for our customers on this
journey. It starts with being able to utilise the expertise of Bell Labs
to consult with our customers and guide them on developing a strategy
and plan that is tailored to their market.”
Nokia has all the building blocks for the Smart City end-to-end
solution whether it is over fixed or mobile network. The solution is
highlighted by the IMPACT IoT platform, which is a scalable, horizontal,
and multi-tenant platform. It enables cities to securely host
applications from multiple agencies in addition to their own
applications. Nokia also provides the end to end security and services.
“Nokia has also been investing in building ecosystem of partners
focusing on different IoT applications and performing technology and
market trials. This enables us to evaluate concept and expedite the
delivery of new applications and use cases while partnering with the
most innovative companies. Nokia can really help in every phase of this
journey, from strategic planning to ensuring that the network is built
right first time and optimised for the smart city applications, to
finally providing access to the most innovative use cases to cities and
their businesses and residents,” says Dr Zuhdi.
Security always remains a grave concern, particularly in the wake of
recent ransomware attacks. He says it is important to evaluate the
end-to-end security for the entire IoT solution, including devices,
network, platform, cloud, and application security. This is the approach
for the Nokia security products which include end-points, gateway, DNS,
and platform security, along with certificate management, security
management, and identity & access management. “The IMPACT IoT
platform allows secured and authenticated collection of IoT data, which
is only distributed to authorised applications and end users. The
NetGuard End-point Security provides a network-based anti-malware
solution combining monitoring, detection, and mitigation for smart
devices and IoT end-points. When the IMPACT IoT platform detects
abnormal traffic, it sends a notification to the application or end user
and has the capability to update the firmware to fix a security hole or
instruct the network to stop the device from transmitting.”
From a security perspective, firmware upgrades are crucial,
particularly as IoT devices are expected to be an operation for a long
time. Nokia has helped operators and enterprises globally to provide
over-the-air (OTA) firmware updates to end device, such as in connected
cars, to proactively address any security concern.
“Companies across the entire value chain of the telecom sector have
an excellent opportunity to not only participate in this transformation
but even to lead it. Nokia has been extremely active in IoT by
optimising our products to support IoT applications, investing in IoT
technologies, acquiring innovative companies, collaborating with IoT
technology leaders, and building IoT ecosystems to develop solutions
covering different industries. This multi-prong approach enables Nokia
to partner with our MENA customers in this IoT journey and provides them
the most innovative end-to-end IoT solutions,” says Dr Zuhdi.
IoT and related technologies continue to evolve and Nokia has big
plans. “The Nokia Worldwide IoT Network Grid (WING) will be available
later this year and will offer both connectivity and managed services to
businesses while enabling service providers to offer IoT services under
their own brand.
We have also recently announced the launch of our award-winning
IMPACT IoT platform with pre-integrated solutions such as video
analytics, Smart Parking, Smart Lighting, and Fleet Management. The
connectivity will also include both LoRA and the newly standardised
NB-IoT. We continue to engage globally with service providers, cities,
and enterprises on the specific requirements in their unique markets.
Meanwhile, we are continuing to invest in critical IoT verticals such as
Smart City, public safety, connected utilities, connected vehicles,
connected health, and connected homes. These verticals will enable our
customers to provide their customers applications that enhance the
quality of their lives, and enhance their environment and business
sustainability while making them safer,” he says.
www.nokia.comWhen News Breaks Out, We Break In. (The 2014 Bloggies Finalist)
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