TELEFONICA, ORANGE, ENGINEERING and ATOS join forces to push common standards for Smart Cities based on the FIWARE platform - Seite 2

Thanks to the open nature of FIWARE specifications, multiple FIWARE providers may emerge so that cities and application providers can avoid getting lock-in. On the other hand, decisions to choose a given FIWARE platform provider will be driven, not only based on costs, but also on trust, e.g. who will provide and operate the environment where applications and/or data will be hosted. This is particularly relevant when data (e.g. those affecting personal information) have to comply with local and/or national regulations or has to cope with some security and privacy requirements, especially if applications or data are to be hosted on the Cloud. Paolo Pandozy, CEO of Engineering, states: "Innovation for Engineering is a key success factor continuously pursued from its birth back in 1980. Tightly coupled with innovation is independence, meaning we all build our solutions taking into consideration what we consider to be the best for our customers. In this context, we see our strategic and full involvement in FIWARE. It is a set of technologies allowing us to be leaders in the market of open solutions. In addition, Openness and Innovation are critical building blocks in the fast growing domain of Smart Cities for which Engineering is providing a leading edge innovative offering".

FIWARE standard APIs, combined with standard data models developed together with cities and application developers, will ensure portability and interoperability of smart city applications.  This will allow to develop smart city applications for different cities at the same time, thus creating a market large enough to attract startups and small enterprises who will create new innovative services for citizens and businesses in urban areas. "There is an incredible opportunity for European cities to take advantage of open solutions and a wide community of developers, to quickly bring digital services and innovations to their citizens", commented Patrice Slupowski, Vice-President of Digital Innovation, Orange.

FIWARE is an open source platform integrating a number of components making it easier to develop smart applications. It was created through a Public-Private Partnership between more than 40 organisations and the European Commission. Now the evolution of FIWARE is extending to other regions, starting with Latin America, where the same vision and ambition is shared.