In a data-driven society, the sheer volume of data is accelerating on an upward slope. Our reliance on human-machine collaboration to be successful will require the velocity, veracity, security and the universal interoperability of data.
The explosion in hardware vendors, the number of communication protocols, and the lack of standardization of metadata and labeling among system integrators have created an environment in which data brokering between devices may be lost in translation or broken. The desired flow of data back and forth between databases, levels of the technology stack, applications, industries, regions, countries and freely throughout the global economy does not yet exist. The vision of machines flowing seamlessly around us and enhancing our lives sounds wonderful, but this utopia will remain a fantasy if communication barriers remain and the data the sensors are collecting cannot be used to provide contextual awareness.
Vendors have always preferred proprietary and closed systems since these tend to garner premium prices and lock a customer into a specific vendor. Cities should take advantage of the potential power they now have to collaborate to accelerate and institute radical changes to the market.
The EU has been working strategically with FIWARE and the Open and Agile Smart Cities (OASC) group to standardize on the same open-source platform. This standardization effort has spread to Brazil, Mexico, and most recently to Japan with its new partner, NEC. The EU is working on setting a single standard for data brokering between countries, as the ability to pool data into data oceans over data lakes will (in theory) generate deeper and more accurate analytical insights.
If you want an open IoT for Smart City, then FIWARE is a natural choice in Europe. But FIWARE comes with some limitations. Those limitations are what we solve with Yggio. We build upon FIWARE components, data models and API standards, but we add the missing pieces and much more.
