Digitization is in full swing in nearly every sector of the economy. In this atmosphere of universal disruption, every firm must be highly innovative and agile enough to respond to rapidly changing business demands. In short, the Internet has changed, companies are changing, and now IT needs to change. The Internet of Everything provides a superb opportunity - and an urgent imperative - for IT to accelerate innovation. This cannot be done without collecting and connecting data and running analysis, the backbone of IoE.

As John Chambers' said in his latest blog, "The Marathon Sprint to go Digital: Are You Ready?""Every market and every industry is moving from the Information Age to the digital age, and the pace of change is happening faster than ever before. Every company, city and country is realizing they must transform to survive and thrive in this new era."

IoE is creating a new tomorrow globally. The first step of IoE is to become a digital business, by simplifying IT to undertake digital transformation. Enhancing customer satisfaction and generating improved results requires good communication, shared responsibilities and clear objectives.

Cities stand to benefit the most from IoE, connecting people, process, data, and things. Working with Cisco, in partnership with global and local innovators, cities are developing IoE-related projects, platforms, and implementations. Importantly, the IoE ambitions and scope are designed to respond to the need for real-time, context-specific information intelligence and analytics to address specific local imperatives.

Recently at Cisco Live 2015 in the World of Solutions, I saw an interesting Powertoon that shows how Smart Connected Cities can use data and analytics at the edge to prepare for the digital transformation and the Internet of Everything.

The video shows a practical use case -everyone can relate to -on how all the connected data, people and processes seamlessly working together enable better experience, rapid responses and service. Orchestrating all the vendors, processes and data via a single integration platform in the cloud is a prerequisite to orchestrate an integrated experience.

Cities around the globe are beginning to build out new digital services such as smart lighting, traffic, waste management and data analytics to reduce costs, tap new sources of revenue, create new innovation business districts and improve the overall quality of urban life. With these new digital services come high expectations around management and availability of the integrated solutions combining technology from multiple vendors and partners. In order to ensure these expectations are met solution providers need to work in a seamless ecosystem. With the number of vendors, providers and partners needed to deliver such a solution, a scalable multi-party service & support ecosystem is imperative. In order to make the smart city initiatives a success all parties involved need to collaborate and operate very efficiently. Seamless multi-party collaboration enabled by a cloud integration platform is an essential piece at the center in delivering exceptional services to the people and run a successful smart city.

Interesting view from CNN on how the cities of tomorrow could look like

Barcelona Smart City Use Case