Washington, DC Added To Smart Gigabit Communities Program

At this week’s Smart Cities Connect Conference in Austin, five cities were added to the US Ignite’s Smart Gigabit Communities (SGC) program.  For their commitment towards the adoption of next generation smart city technologies, Washington, DC is one of the five that joins an already existing gigabit community network of twelve cities.  Together with municipalities, network carriers and other corporate partners, the SGC program works to develop smart gigabit applications in order to address local community needs.  Smart city solution projects utilizing emerging gigabit technologies or platforms requiring high-speed connectivity will enhance community efforts in transportation, workforce development and public safety.

Washington, DC was chosen for its smart city initiatives in waste management, movement analytics and water quality sensing. By leveraging intelligent city infrastructure, including connected devices and data analytics, Washington is improving the quality of life for residents. The SGC program is funded in part by a three-year, $3 million National Science Foundation grant.  Newly announced SGC cities will develop two gigabit applications addressing issues within their community. The SGC and its team of experts will provide insight and resources for smart city efforts focusing on accelerating growth in fiber applications via programmable fiber and wireless networks.  Read full article here.

 

Healthcare IT Embraces Edge Computing

An increasing number of healthcare organizations are adopting and continuing to add Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices to their IT infrastructure and as a result the industry is discovering that edge computing is a more efficient way to analyze data than cloud computing.  This trend is moving the healthcare market into an industry leader for connected devices as clinicians are able to offer improved patient care and interaction through real-time data collection and analytics.  Cost benefits are being experienced as well when data can be analyzed in real-time environments on the edge of the network and not have to be sent to the cloud for processing that could cause bottlenecking due to the sheer volume of constantly produced data by IoT devices.

With an estimated growth of IoMT connected devices to be 20 – 30 billion by 2020, significant advancements will take place in the healthcare industry.  More accurate diagnosis can be made at a patient’s initial interaction with the clinician with IoMT devices;  as well as, improvements made in the future monitoring of patient conditions.  A paradigm shift in connected devices from data consumers to data producers on smart devices means real-time data analytics need to be processed at the edge for realized improvements in healthcare IT infrastructure operations, putting us all in a win-win situation.  Read full article here.

Edge Computing, When Time is of the Essence

Is your head spinning tying to effectively  optimize the processing power of your organization’s growing number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices used to help the business run more efficiently, boost the bottom line and increase ROI?   As the IoT market hovers on the brink of tremendous growth and the International Data Corporation forecasts global IoT spending to reach $1.4 billion by 2021, the answer is probably yes due to the fact that your organization is contributing to this explosive growth pattern.  In addition to that,  the unprecedented volume of data generated by IoT devices is probably putting a tremendous amount of strain on your internet architecture and making your cloud computing model impossible to control.  So, what do you do?

The solution to this deluge of data is edge computing, processing at the edge of the network versus sending to the cloud for processing.  Faster analytics for more immediate response in making business decisions is better served if the data processed is near the device while also reducing some of the pressure on your network.  However, cloud computing will more than likely still have its place in your environment and the goal would be to leverage the benefits of both edge computing and cloud computing to complement one another with an eye towards a balanced strategy and a stable network. Read full article here on marrying the two models.