Huawei and DU-IT Help Duisburg Become a Smart City

At CEBIT 2018, Huawei and the DU-IT GmbH, a municipal subsidiary of Duisburger Versorgungs- und Verkehrsgesellschaft mbH (DVV) signed a Framework Agreement on the “Rhine Cloud” brand and Smart City services. The agreement expands the cooperation of the two companies and strengthens their joint efforts to enable Duisburg to become a smart city. Both Huawei and the DU-IT GmbH are part of the network “Smart City Duisburg”.

The announcement follows a “Memorandum of Understanding” (MoU) which was signed by the City of Duisburg and Huawei Enterprise Business Group in January 2018. Both partners agreed to make Duisburg an innovative and digitalized model city in Western Europe within a few years by implementing new information and communications technologies (IKT). The goal of the MoU is to develop innovative ideas, solutions and make use of new technologies to enhance the quality of life in Duisburg through an ecosystem including local and international partners and municipal companies. Today’s signing of the framework agreement marks a key milestone in this development.

“Huawei is focused on working with city governments to make modern cities smarter and easier to live in. We are delighted to be Duisburg’s preferred partner for developing a smart city and this cooperation will build on our success of delivering smart city deployments worldwide. Huawei integrates new ICT in unified platforms enabling IoT, communications, cloud data center and intelligent command center, to create the city’s nervous system. Huawei’s expertise as a leading technology provider coupled with DU-IT’s strength as a city ISP puts us in an ideal position to help the city’s business customers drive innovation and growth, bring safety and efficiency to citizens, and make the city more attractive to businesses and investors,” says Vincent Pang, president of Huawei West Europe Region.

Vincent Pang, president of Huawei West Europe Region

The introduction of Rhine Cloud, the brand name for a Smart City and Public Services Cloud Platform, represents a significant step towards making Duisburg a smart city, providing the capabilities to support city automation and intelligence. During the signing ceremony for the framework agreement, Huawei also announced that the first Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings are now available on Rhine Cloud which is being hosted in Duisburg by DU-IT.

DU-IT and NavVis MOU to create Smart City SaaS offerings for Rhine Cloud

The first Rhine Cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings will leverage NavVis technology, designed to digitize indoor environments and used for Smart City use cases like eGovernment, Tourism, Facility Management, Retail and others.

The technology enables users to explore the indoors with a fully immersive 3D walkthrough. After scanning the indoors environment with NavVis M6 indoor mobile mapping system, the browser-based NavVis IndoorViewer visualizes building data as high resolution images.

Examples of practical applications will be shown at CEBIT and include a virtual tour of the historic waterworks, a digitally guided tour through the Stadthistorisches Museum in Duisburg and a centimeter-accurate 3D mapping of office buildings in Duisburg. The service will be available through Rhine Cloud in October 2018.

“As a municipal company, we have deep expertise in providing the highest level of security and customized solutions to ensure smooth running city services. We help our customers migrate their databases to the cloud, monitor the set-up operations, und, if required, manage their cloud environments to offer a full-service package,” says Stefan Soldat, Managing Director of DU-IT. Data is being hosted in DU-IT’s the data center which is ISO 27001-certified and offers a wide range of IT services for customers with increased security requirements, such as municipalities, municipal institutions and universities. The services of DU-IT’s widely diversified portfolio can be flexibly combined and range from cloud storage to software-as-a-service solutions to fiber-connectivity. DU-IT’s own data center has a special security zone system that complies with the specifications of the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) and TÜV Level 3. Complex systems for emergency power, fire protection and cooling ensure that computing power is always available. Außerdem, the data are also synchronously mirrored at physically separate locations.