Unprecedented urban development and growing populations are putting pressure on communities to design frameworks and policies that enable smart, sustainable economic and environmental development.
Enter, smart communities. An entire industry has grown up around IT solutions that connect grids, water systems, transportation, and buildings. And this industry is growing—the global smart communities market is going to grow at a cumulative average growth rate of 18.26% from 2015-2020 to hit $34.35 billion by 2020.
Top companies in the smart communities market
Creating a smart community requires a lot of IT to connect and monitor utilities and services for optimal efficiency. IBM and Cisco are two heavy hitters dominating the global smart communities market, but according to Technavio, there are 13 other top companies connecting communities worldwide.
ABB Group
Offers smart cities solutions for transportation management, water management, electricity grids, and smart buildings solutions that promote sustainable development.
Accenture
Provides smart building and energy solutions to reduce cost and increase efficiency. The firm is also providing big data and analytics solutions for smart city development projects.
Ericsson
Offers system integration for grid applications, analytics, and M2M smart life solutions, and smart network solutions.
ESRI
Provides geographical information systems (GIS) adapted to smart community solutions.
Hitachi
Hitachi is a technology provider that offers different technology solutions for smart cities. The products include information control systems, smart grids, energy management systems, community energy managements systems, intelligent water, smart mobility, and Hitachi consulting services for smart cities.
HP
Provides computer hardware, software, IT services, and IT consulting services provider. The company offers virtual cloud networking, software-defined networking (SDN) applications, and HP networking solutions for smart cities.
Huawei
Offers smart community network solutions as passive optical network (PON) technology and all-optical network (AON) technology for the creation of smart community network infrastructure.
Microsoft
Microsoft is a technology provider that offers solutions to develop smart city projects. The cities are installing Microsoft’s products that will harness cloud computing technology and big data.
NEC
Offers smart city IT solutions, such as sensing, authentication, cloud computing, monitoring, and control.
NTT DATA
Provides M2M intelligent communications solutions for smart cities.
Oracle
Offers smart cities platform solutions that are integrated and innovative for local government.
SAP
Provides smart city software solution for local and municipal governments.
Wipro
Offers consulting and architecture services, application implementation services, and unified communication services.
