Nexgen Providing Smart City as a Service in the MENA region

Nexgen began operations at a time when smart and digital transformation was still a distant concept in the region. Yet its founder and CEO Ghazi Atallah knew that one day this would become the major trend for not only businesses, but governments alike. As he explains, “the perfect storm hit when three things came together. First citizens and customers started expecting more from their cities and governments as they became accustomed to doing everything instantly online. Secondly technology evolved and became more accessible, cost effective and feasible especially with the issue of connectivity not being an issue anymore and thirdly pressure to deliver better more efficient services by the government increased.”

Even though the state of readiness might differ between countries and even cities within the same country the fact is that digitization is on the minds of all governments. Atallah states, “Governments today don’t discuss traditional engagement with their constituents, they want to engage better with individuals and businesses and are expected to do more.”

Nexgen had already carried out some lighthouse projects and so was already well known. The Smart Dubai project highlighted the strengths of Nexgen. Atallah explains, “The Dubai Smart City is the first full scale smart city project globally. It has become a reference for cities across the world such as Singapore and Amsterdam who have visited to learn more about the data governance model and implementation as well as the smart City platform. We as Nexgen are proud to have come up with the master planning exercise, the data governance model and the smart city platform concept.”

Ghazi is especially proud that this innovative first of its kind project originated from the region for the region. “I am happy that there was a government like Dubai that was not only receptive but very capable and very willing to adopt and move forward with this concept. It exemplified the fact that innovation can come from the region and we have established ourselves as thought leaders in this domain because we knew from the beginning that we had the capacity and leadership to be proactive. Today we can export this best practice elsewhere.”

For smart cities to succeed there is a mixture of both professional and quality work coupled with a local knowhow of the intricate details of the city or government. In the end the concept of smart cities or digital transformation is to use technology to make things work more efficiently, make better decisions and ultimately improve the lives and sustainability of cities and its inhabitants. Atallah states, “Smart city is not one thing or the other it is all over, I call it the smart city DNA. It is embedding smart city elements across the city in its economy, environment, education, health etc with the aim of impacting happiness in the end.”

Today Nexgen is working with the city of Riyadh alongside the Riyadh development authority under the auspices of the governor of Riyadh to study what need to be done for smart city transformation there. He adds, “We are working to come up with ideas that could positively effect and change Riyadh in accordance with the national transformation Vision 2030 which will ultimately impact the quality of life and enhance efficiency. Each city has different challenges.” Nexgen is also in discussions with several other cities in the region on a similar exercise.

But Nexgen is not stopping here; it is extending its service offering. As the world moves towards an OPEX model rather than a CAPEX model Nexgen will be offering Smart City as a Service. Atallah explains, “We will now offer operational managed services for cities and this is effectively why Zain group invested in us. We will become a service provider for smart cities. We have already built our own in country clouds in Kuwait, KSA and UAE to deliver Managed Smart-City and Smart-District Services for Governments and Real Estate developers. We have the knowledge and expertise to take it market quickly and efficiently something that will not be easy for others to do.”

Nexgen’s technology platform is built on technology that is solid and well known working with companies like EMC Dell, Pivotal Cloud Foundry, SAP and others. According to Ghazi the real innovation is in how these pieces of technology have been architecturally orchestrated and integrated together in an innovative way with well organized structured data allowing Nexgen to provide cities with dashboards and data analytics much needed in decision making process and thus adding value. Atallah states, “We will launch our new Smart City as a service by the end of the year and we look forward to a lot of opportunities within the UAE, KSA, Kuwait and elsewhere to provide either consultancy or deliver a turnkey proposition both vertical and horizontal in various sectors whether smart energy, smart security, smart health or others.”

As for the future, Atallah believes that digital transformation is not going away anytime soon. He states, “It is a paradigm shift in the way we use technology and this will not change. However the way that cities and governments do business will change empowered by technology to make decisions in real-time and to better plan for the future.”