According to Pinnacle, South Africa’s leading ICT distributor and authorised distributor of Huawei Technologies Enterprise products in South Africa and Africa, cities around the world have set their digital transformation sights on uplifting healthcare, education and delivering quality utility and transport services while also prioritising public safety.

Fred Saayman, Pinnacle’s Huawei business unit executive, says Huawei actively contributes to global smart city construction with a footprint in over 120 cities in 40 countries.

“In the past two years alone, Huawei has helped seven cities win international smart city awards, so the company is exceptionally well positioned to assist South African cities to achieve their digital transformation goals. The Huawei Smart City Solution is comprised of leading new information and communications technologies aimed at building a smart city nervous system with all things sensing, connected and intelligent,” he says.

Saayman confirms that big data management and analysis is accommodated on the FusionInsight platform with ubiquitous connections and numerous sensors. “Smart Streetlight — ideal for energy saving city construction — is just one of the advantages of this incredible solution. For example, in the city of Weifang in China, more than 40 000 streetlights have been reconstructed based on NB-Internet of Things (IoT). As a result, the operations and maintenance (O&M) efficiency has improved by 45%, the lighting rate has increased by 25% and the annual electricity consumption has been reduced by 6.8 million kilowatt-hours. In a South Africa constantly challenged by an energy crisis, this solution holds immense promise for the conservation of power and better service delivery through enhanced O&M.”

He adds that smart parking, delivers brand-new parking services to inner-city areas by accurately and quickly detecting parking space occupation status. “Smart water gives a real-time full picture of the city lifeline. Again in Weifang, the ‘smart river chief’ solution — based on eLTE — is recording the state and quality of water in real time,” he says.

Saayman notes the key success factors for smart city construction include breaking data silos and restructuring processes; strong execution teams with high level planning, coordinated construction and iterative evolution. “Huawei has unmatched experience in all aspects of smart city planning; consultation; project management; engineering services; and implementation. This experience also extends to smart campuses which play an important role in people’s work and life.”

He says that by leveraging emerging ICT technologies, such as cloud computing, IoT, big data and artificial intelligence, Huawei’s Smart Campus Solution addresses challenges to traditional campuses including: low management efficiency; poor service experience; serious energy waste; weak security and high operational costs. “The solution implements digital transformation of campuses, fuels innovative industry development and enhances service experience.

“Huawei is committed to building the digital enablement platform, redefining the campus service architecture. This platform is compatible with various terminals and supports diverse applications to integrate data, visualise the campus status, manage all services and control events. By constructing secure, comfortable, efficient, green and smart campuses, the solution provides better service experiences for campus users and operational excellence for campus operators, thereby unleashing more business and social benefits,” concludes Saayman.

About Pinnacle
Pinnacle is South Africa’s leading ICT distribution company built on the foundation of entrepreneurial spirit. We offer our clients a broad range of world-class technology products seamlessly delivered across an expansive footprint. Everything we do is underpinned by our technical expertise, drive and determination — we call it delivering the exceptional. Pinnacle is an authorised and exclusive distributor for many leading vendors, allowing us to be the first to market the latest technology and ideas available. For more information visit www.pinnacle.co.za.