Ericsson India sets up new division to focus on Smart Cities space

BENGALURU: Swedish telecom equipment manufacturer Ericsson is setting up a new division called Society and Industry vertical to focus on smart city projects in India, a senior executive said.

The new division will be headed by Rajeev Saluja, who has been heading the company’s north India division so far.

“New business wave has changed, conditions of business is being done, it’s opening up for a complete new complex for some point of view and it’s a central observation for we call it our “Network Society strategy”,” Paolo Colella, vice president and head of consulting and systems integration at Ericsson, told ET.

“The society is becoming networked and we see a fundamental opportunity for us. It doesn’t impact on our traditional customers of Telcos because they need to adjust to be able to monetize. We have also seen a lot of things we have been doing in the Telco space are potentially useful as well outside that’s also a matter of stream focus for us,” he said.

Colello said the company is using many of its sensor-based and analytics technologies to serve other industries, more specifically the smart city segment. The company is already shifting its focus from hardware to software globally and according to Colello, with smart city opportunity, India could become one of the largest markets for Ericsson.

To begin with, Ericsson will focus on three main areas for its Society and Industry division in India, namely Energy and Utility, Transport and Automotive, and Safety and Security industries. All these three segment are core to the smart city project.

“Transport actors create intelligent transport systems for people and goods, Energy actors benefit on connectivity and data analytics in smart grids, and Security actors can improve their emergency response, all aided by IoT solutions,” Colello said explaining how Ericsson’s existing IoT capabilities can work in these sectors.

Ericsson’s business mix has changed over the past few years with 66 percent of the company’s sales for 2014 coming from services and software as well as the requirements being placed on today’s networks in order to capture all the needs of users.

“In our Networked Society vision, connectivity and Internet of things (IoT) is seen as the starting point for entirely new ways to collaborate, innovate and socialize,” Colello said.

Ericsson provides some 40 percent of the global mobile traffic with connectivity. “We drive the evolution of the IoT by lowering thresholds for businesses to create new solutions powered by modern communications technology, by breaking barriers between industries, and by connecting companies, people and society,” Colello said.