"Dell Technologies has the capabilities to develop a strong digital blueprint and foundation for the smart cities"

For an advanced Smart City, a robust ICT foundation is required and Dell Technologies has been continuously contributing into it. The company and its partner ecosystem together bring offerings and capabilities to help execute Smart City. With the launch of Digital India initiative, India has seen an exceptional growth in various areas. Dell Technologies is witnessing an unexpected growth on several smart city projects which are being implemented in collaboration with state governments and enterprises. In a chat with VARINDIA, Kamal Arora, Sr. Director - Sales (Government), Dell Technologies discusses about the growth drivers of digital transformation, contribution of the company in the transformation, upcoming technologies and roadmap

According to you what would be the growth drivers of India digital transformation market?

According to latest McKinsey published report titled Digital India: Technology to transform a connected nation, India has made unprecedented progress in rapid digitisation of the economy under PM Modi, with a quantum leap in core areas like IT, online retail and digital communication as well as other areas of the economy – financial sector, agriculture and logistics. The drive on healthcare, digitisation of records, extensive work on space communications shall be generating massive data which will be helpful in understanding the current situations and drive future growth engines.   

How do you see the present digital cities/smart cities landscape in India?

We are seeing a good momentum on several smart city projects being implemented in partnership between various state governments and enterprises across the country. India is currently undergoing a massive digitisation wave and transformation to become a digitally enabled nation and technology is at the heart of this transformation. The Smart Cities project is a tremendous initiative by the government and has created a vast amount of opportunities for the country and its IT industry. Companies across sectors are identifying ways to benefit from India’s Smart Cities project.

How Dell is participating in this transformation?

Dell Technologies has the capabilities to develop a strong digital blueprint and foundation for the smart cities. The solutions to develop and execute smart cities can broadly be categorized into applications and digital infrastructure. Applications for the delivery and monitoring of the services and digital infrastructure will be the foundation on which applications will run. Smart Cities need superior digital architect and digital infrastructure to ensure proper planning and execution. They also rely heavily on a solid digital foundation and smart data management.

We have certainly added value through our solutions such as GSTN – GST Network, for example, is built on our stack. The recent Central Board of Excise and Customs revamp of the infrastructure is on our stack. Aadhar has a large deployment of our storage and server products. So we are playing a very active role and have taken partnership-oriented approach. 

What are the innovations that Dell has contributed in this transformation?

Dell Technologies Smart City Partner Ecosystem brings together players offering different solutions and capabilities to help in the execution of Smart Cities and IoT (internet of things) projects. This opportunity will bring significant growth in IoT and Artificial Intelligence which will be witnessed with the help of smart city projects. The data so created will be humongous and will help city administration to be more proactive for citizen services. The Intelligent traffic management systems deployment will be helpful not only in managing the traffic better but will also make the roads safer. With several systems in place to make a city smart, it is also important to have the right devices for consumption of these services. Dell’s solutions on compute, storage, data backup and cyber security plays a vital role in managing the big data and at the same time the wide range of PCs and laptops provide citizens with the right devices for consumption of these services.

What are the upcoming technologies that will enable a smart city?

The continued advancement of technology driven by the four mega-trends of big data, always- connected mobile devices, social networks and cloud computing is resulting in an exponential growth of data and the creation of digital citizens who have access to the information at their fingertips. IDC forecasts that by 2020 there will be 30 billion connected devices to the Internet of Things ecosystem. These devices with numerous diverse apps will be constantly sending and receiving data. This digital transformation coupled with the exponential growth rate of urbanization is driving cities to transform themselves into Smart Cities to manage their Citizens expectation, optimize and better allocate their resources, provide a safe and sustainable environment, foster innovation and deliver superior, personalized, always-on end-user experience.

What is Dell's future road map in this regard?   

A successful future-proof Smart City must be built on a strong ICT foundation layer that is open, agile, software-defined, and data analytics driven allowing for efficient city management, fast to market services, sustainability, innovation and transparent citizen engagement. Dell Technologies has implemented and executed several smart-city related projects globally and we plan to bring global best practices to India and customise solutions to match Indian necessities.