Experts focus on Internet of Things use to boost productivity

DAILY NEWS Reporter

TANZANIA and other African countries have a great opportunity in exploring the Internet of Things (IoT) through collaboration between stakeholders.

This was said recently by Mr Li Peng, the Huawei President of Southern Africa Region when he informed the media on an upcoming AfricaCom 2017 which will be held in Cape Town next week.

He said that before it is applied to a vertical industry, the product and service should be integrated through collaboration between various key stakeholders. According to him it increasingly offers new opportunities for communication and to improve business efficiency.

“Currently these opportunities are being explored around the world, there is great scope for IoT in Africa,” he said. He said that Huawei has introduced its ‘GLocal’ ecosystem philosophy in Africa in order to build a customized IoT solution and enable operators to provide IoT-as-a-service to verticals in the region.

Mr. Peng said that GLocal refers to leveraging global experience and engagement with leading international vendors and partnering with local players to cultivate a local ecosystem. He said that for a GLocal ecosystem to work, operators and partners from different industries and areas need to work together to establish channels for communication be tween operators and vertical industries.

“Another great ecosystem that supports IoT connection management is OceanConnect, an open ecosystem built on IoT, cloud computing, and Big Data technologies,” he said, adding that OceanConnect provides over 170 open APIs and serial Agent software to promote app release, simplify device access, and guarantee network connection.

There are currently more than a 100 global partners in the Huawei OceanConnect ecosystem. He further said that Huawei has already fulfilled innovation responsibility through laboratory for industry partners, saying that two laboratories have already been set up in Lagos and Johannesburg.

“The successful launch of the world’s first smart water system utilizing NB-IoT technology by the Shenzhen Water Group (SZWG) which took place on World Water Day, in March 2017 is testament to this,” he further said.

SZWG is the largest water company in Shenzhen, producing 97 percent of the city’s water. In order to comply with Shenzhen Government legislation, he said that the company needed to amend its metering system in order to meter the water usage to each home directly, instead of measuring the consumption of the estate management company every month.

Ordinarily, he said, this would have required 300 more employees, and increase operational expenses by approximately US$2.2 million per year.