Global information-technology giant IBM is planning to provide its Smarter Cities solutions to medium-sized cities this year by means of cloud computing and software as a service.

The move will aim to expand IBM’s business base and add new business partners, thereby increasing the company’s revenue and creating new markets.

IBM’s vice president and chief technology officer for the global public sector Guruduth Banavar said the company planned to deliver shared services for Smarter Cities, focused on business outcomes rather than IT solutions, through a cloud-based delivery model, starting this year.

This will create a sustainable and expandable delivery model to which cities can log-on as subscribers to manage, operate and maintain their physical infrastructure and city-wide services. The subscribers or customers will pay a monthly services fee, he said.

“Today, only the largest cities can consume traditional IT systems. The majority of the world’s cities have limited IT infrastructure and [insufficient] IT staff for the transition to smarter operations,” Banavar said.

However, in Thailand, the company is collaborating with the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) to make Bangkok a “Smart City” by utilising Smarter Cities solutions, technologies and innovations to steer the development of new Bangkok.

IBM Asean’s vice president of general business Tim Wong said the company would also expand its general business into the enterprise market this year. It will enter the middle market, increase its business-partner capacity and create new frontiers, or “geo expansion”, in order to build local ecosystems that are industry- and solution-focused.

“Asean is a region of opportunity and growth, since it will be an economically integrated free-trade zone by 2015, with free movement of labour, and a GDP of US$1.4 trillion (Bt43.34 trillion), according to a 2010 forecast,” he said. “This will put it behind China, but ahead of India, with the world’s fourth-largest population, growing to 546 million people by 2012.

“It will have the world’s youngest workforce. By 2050, only 22 per cent of its population will be over 60, compared with 30 to 40 per cent in China, the United States and the European Union. Asean also has foreign direct investment of $38 billion, ranking it second in Asia, after China,” Wong said.

He said that IBM would focus this year on client priorities and IT-business segments including retail, banking, consumer products, transportation, industrial products, insurance and energy and utilities.

Moreover, IBM is in the process of geo expansion; establishing new branch offices as “new frontiers” in major cities around the world. In 2010 the company opened 13 branch offices and it expects to increase this number to 25 by 2013.

In Thailand, IBM set up a branch office in Chiang Mai last year and plans to open another office in Chon Buri this year. Another two or three branch offices are planned in Thailand in 2014.

Source:-http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2011/01/27/technology/IBM-plans-software-as-a-service-for-urban-centres-30147303.html