Open APIs to underpin open smart city data and services market

Barcelona, Spain — 15 November 2017— TM Forum, the industry association driving digital transformation through collaboration, announced today at the Smart City World Expo in Barcelona, that Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC), one of the world’s leading smart city associations, has adopted the Forum’s Open APIs. OASC is a city-driven, not-for-profit organisation with a vision to create an open smart city data and services market, based on the needs of cities and communities.

OASC is one of the key contributors to SynchroniCity, a flagship initiative aiming to deliver a digital single market for IoT-enabled urban services for Europe and beyond. SynchroniCity consists of 42 partners – public, private, NGOs and academic institutions – who have joined forces to realise this goal, with a budget of around €20M, including a €15M contribution from the European Commission.

As part of creating a shared market, cities need to agree on a common set of principles and building blocks. As the voice of many cities around the world, OASC is actively shaping global city specifications and standards in collaboration with several international partners. For example, OASC has joined more than 80 other organisations in signing the City as a Platform Manifesto. Today it announced that it is endorsing and will be using TM Forum’s Open APIs, which are part of TM Forum’s Smart City Reference Architecture, as one of the building blocks of the OASC shared city marketplace. 

“OASC is a partner to many prominent organisations and initiatives around the world and is excited to start this new chapter in the already flourishing partnership with TM Forum. TM Forum’s Open API approach resonates with cities in their quest of digital transformation towards a smarter and more connected world, while balancing all the challenges that follow,” says Martin Brynskov, OASC Chair.

“The fact that leading cities around the world will start relying on the Open APIs in our Smart City Reference Architecture, created by our 850 service provider and technology member organisations, is a tremendously important step forward for cities around the world, and for the city ecosystem at large. By using the same building blocks, cities can get easy access to a shared marketplace of solutions and ideas”, said Carl Piva, TM Forum Vice President and Head of the Smart City Forum.

“Underpinning a city’s digital platform architecture with the Forum Open APIs means cities can rest assured that their digital roadmap is open and interoperable. By adopting best practice from the communications industry, cities are readying themselves to manage scalability and agility in their digital ecosystems”, said Joann O’Brien, TM Forum Vice President for APIs & Ecosystems.

About TM Forum

TM Forum is an association of over 850 member companies generating US$2 trillion in revenue and serving five billion customers across 180 countries. We drive collaboration and collective problem-solving to maximize the business success of communication and digital service providers and their ecosystem of suppliers around the world. Today, our focus is on supporting members as they navigate their unique digital transformation journeys, providing practical and proven assets and tools to accelerate execution and platforms to facilitate collaborative problem solving and innovation. Learn more at www.tmforum.org.

About OASC

The global Open & Agile Smart Cities initiative (OASC) is an international network of national networks of smart cities. The overall objective is to foster a global smart city market based on the needs of cities and communities, establishing Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms (MIMs). OASC currently has 114 member cities from 23 countries. If your city is interested in connecting with other cities and join the OASC network, send an email to [email protected] or contact your OASC representative. The full list of contacts can be found on www.oascities.org.

Press Contact 

OASC
Davor Meersmann
[email protected]
+32477514581

TM Forum
CCgroup PR
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+44(0)2038249201