ALKHOBAR/REDMOND: When it comes to “smart” living, Microsoft Corporation has been at the forefront of research into how information technology can add value to everyday experiences. As far back as the late 1980s, the company was engaged in research into interactive television. In 1994, Microsoft Home opened, located inside the company’s Executive Briefing Center at its Redmond, Washington campus. This concept facility showcases how software-driven innovations might influence consumers’ lives. The latest technology scenarios on display at the Microsoft Home highlight prototype devices and software designed to deliver enriched entertainment, information and communication experiences throughout the home. Many of these technologies will become available, and perhaps even ubiquitous, over the next decade for average consumers.
Charlie Kindel, GM, Connected Home, Microsoft Corporation was a keynote speaker back in January at the Intelligent Cities Conference in Makkah. Arab News caught up with Kindel recently in Redmond and asked him for his thoughts on what Smart Cities might offer to the general public in Saudi Arabia.
“The first thing I’d like to point out is that most people don’t want to deal with IT technology,” said Kindel with a laugh. “Most consumers don’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘Hey, I’m going to go and do some technology things today.’ They wake up and say, ‘I want to enjoy some music or read a book. I want to learn or I want to communicate with friends.’ When we look at Smart Cities from that viewpoint, we think of how we can build end-to-end user experiences for consumers.”
Of course those experiences are created from not only incorporating adequate infrastructure during the city’s design and construction, but also from integrating the applications which make that infrastructure useful.
“With Intelligent Cities you have to take the perspective from one end of the spectrum, which is the city’s infrastructure and IT systems, all the way to the consumers and their perspective around experiences. It’s really software that bridges that gap” Kindel explained. “You can lay as much cable as you want and build in network infrastructure, but if you don’t have rich software that connects everything together and really delivers the intelligence, then you don’t have an Intelligent City. You just have a bunch of technology which really isn’t very interesting or very valuable.”
Microsoft anticipates that its software offerings will be utilized extensively as the Kingdom develops Smart Cities. This is due to the broadness of its technology portfolio and the strong adoption of its products and solutions by government, business and consumers in Saudi Arabia.
“When we think about digital cities and what Microsoft can deliver, all of our technology assets come to bear. In the infrastructure of a digital city, whether it’s dealing with how the city itself is managed in terms of utilities, information systems or the communications infrastructure, we have products that can fit into each of those scenarios on how the city is actually designed and operates. Our products such as Windows Server, our database product Microsoft SQL Server, our collaboration software around SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange, our enterprise management software which we call System Center, those are all types of products that will provide advantages to the administrators and managers of Intelligent Cities,” Kindel said.
At the other end of the spectrum, Kindel explained, are Microsoft’s offerings around the three screens that matter to consumers - the television, the PC and the phone. Microsoft’s goal for consumers is to create seamless experiences across all three of those devices, focusing on entertainment, productivity and communications.
Kindel advised that while cities in some countries are more advanced than Saudi Arabia in the implementation of certain “smart” technologies, it is only recently that creating cities offering end to end intelligence became a reality. The Kingdom’s strategy of building such cities from the foundations up provides the opportunity to cost effectively develop fully integrated Smart Cities.
“The reality is that there are a lot of these types of scenarios that people have dreamt about for a long time and believed that someday would be possible,” remarked Kindel. “It is really at the time we are in now, that there has been a confluence of factors. For example, the costs of storage, flat panel displays and raw computing power have been lowered. There has been an explosion of content and content types available in digital form. Smart technologies are now broadly considered interesting and desirable to consumers at large.”
The bottom line is that people view the inclusion of technology as a way to make daily activities more enjoyable, efficient and productive. Microsoft hopes that its technology solutions will be considered by the planners of the Kingdom’s Smart Cities to offer the best opportunities to deliver on the promise of innovative, digital Saudi communities thriving in a connected world.
To understand more about the Kingdom’s initiative to develop Intelligent Cities, see the presentation from the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority posted at www.scribd.com/doc/11718085/saudi-smart-cities-by-sagia-at-2009-intel-ci...
