Silver Spring and Panasonic alliance extends smart city reach

Silver Spring Networks and Panasonic have joined forces to bring to market a diverse portfolio of smart and sustainable solutions for cities, real estate developers, utilities, and other smart city customers.

The new go-to-market alliance, announced at CES 2017, will integrate Panasonic’s CityNOW solutions with Silver Spring’s Starfish Internet of Things (IoT) platform. CityNOW combines Panasonic and third-party technologies across five smart city pillars: smart mobility; clean energy; city services; smart buildings and health and wellness.

Under the new agreement, the business unit of Panasonic Corporation of North America will offer Silver Spring’s Starfish platform and SLV6 city management platform service models to its city and utility customers as part of its broader CityNOW integrated solutions portfolio.

The alliance between Panasonic and Silver Spring supports CityNOW’s Safe and Smart Streets initiative which, according to the companies, turns a single-use asset often considered a liability -- the street light -- into a multi-use, valuable asset.

The street light pole becomes the host for multiple smart and sustainable technologies with cross-cutting benefits: controllable smart LED lights that save energy and O&M costs, community WiFi, environmental sensing (temperature, air quality, light intensity), video cameras for public safety and parking/traffic management.

Connected and controlled by an IoT backbone, Safe and Smart Streets, transforms “just a light” into the “smartphone of the streetscape”.

“As more cities want to join the new digital frontier, the landscape demands collaboration between best-in-class stakeholders to bring safety, transportation, and other departmental initiatives such as street lighting to life,” said Brandon Davito, vice president of smart cities and street lights, Silver Spring Networks.

“With Silver Spring’s Starfish IoT platform, we’re pleased to partner with a world-class leader such as Panasonic to help cities like Denver achieve their sustainable technology goals for better service to their citizens and business communities.”

Panasonic has also announced the deployment of Silver Spring’s Starfish platform to connect and control LED streetlights at Peña Station NEXT, a 400-acre, mixed-use transit-oriented development adjacent to Denver International Airport (DEN).

The company has partnered with the City and County of Denver, utility Xcel Energy, developer LC Fulenwider, and other stakeholders to make Peña Station NEXT an iconic example of smart and sustainable solutions. This public-private partnership will utilise Peña as a test bed for technologies and business models before broader deployment throughout the Denver metro area and beyond.

“Peña Station NEXT is a living smart city lab combining a variety of stakeholders and solutions to shape the definition of a modern, connected city-- a city that is more predictive, adaptive, and responsive,” said Jarrett Wendt, executive vice president of Panasonic Enterprise Solutions Company.

“Nowhere does Panasonic’s vision of creating ‘a better life, a better world’ come alive more than in a smart city context. We are proud to be making the smart city of tomorrow a reality in North America today, and look forward to collaborating with Silver Spring to deliver this transformation.”

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