OREANDA-NEWS. Vodafone announced a new initiative to provide intelligent services to cities, helping them ensure more effective management of city resources and address some of the most pressing needs faced by cities today. The new offering, Vodafone Connected City, will also enable the development of new smarter cities solutions for both public administration and private sector companies. As part of the initiative, IBM (NYSE: IBM) will work with Vodafone to provide hardware, software and services to help improve the efficiency of Spanish cities and address important municipal issues such as mobility, buildings design, security and emergency management, energy, water, education, tourism, commerce, and healthcare.

Part of an agreement between Vodafone Spain and Junta de Andaluc?a, Vodafone will invest more than 243 million euros over two years on telecommunications infrastructure, encouraging the development of the technology sector and developing projects to create strategic growth in the region.

In Seville, the capital city of the province of Andaluc?a, Spain, a control and development center will be created by Vodafone. The center will focus on creating smart city solutions that can easily and efficiently be used by cities ranging from 20,000 to 150,000 residents, that otherwise may not have the funds to invest in smart city infrastructure projects on their own. This center is also expected to help make the Andaluc?a territory of Spain a leader in the development of Big Data and smart solutions for cities.

“This collaboration is aimed at improving competitiveness and progress throughout Spain’s cities.  The new center will help municipalities provide citizens better public services in important areas ranging from sustainability to education and healthcare,” said Antonio Fern?ndez, regional Andalusia director, Vodafone Spain. “Furthermore, this project will help turn Andaluc?a into an innovation center as well as create new employment opportunities linked to data analytics.”

Vodafone will provide the most advanced mobile communications technology including citywide sensors and a Global M2M Platform that will enable the connection of thousands of sensors with the intelligent Vodafone Connected City system. The new cloud-based system will run on IBM z Systems powered by Linux; these highly secure systems enable cloud services while also delivering the speed, availability and efficiency required to drive mobile services at scale. IBM Intelligent Operations software will provide monitoring and management of city services. IBM’s MobileFirst platform will be used to create citizen facing mobile applications, IBM Information Server and Maximo asset management software will be used in the solutions as well.

“IBM is working with cities around the world, helping them use Big Data and analytics to more effectively manage all aspects of city services and improve quality of life for citizens,” said Antonio Pires, Smarter Cities leader, IBM Spain, Portugal, Greece & Israel. “The agreement with Vodafone will allow us to jointly create new innovations for cities that allow them to break through the complexity of managing city services and enhance their economic competitiveness.”