Computer-networking multinational Cisco Systems plans to approach the government with a proposal that it pilot the implementation of smart cities in Thailand, based on the creation of digital infrastructure within communities.

The move aims to assist the government to manage a number of cities with technology ecosystems offered by Cisco's service-delivery platform, which the company says will build smart and connected communities.

According to Cisco's president for globalisation and smart+connected communities Anil Menon, Thailand - like many countries around the world - is facing a major urbanisation trend that is challenging city governors to properly manage bigger cities in which many more people live and work.

Currently, the world over, as cities are growing rapidly, the challenge to make them smarter is also greater. Early adoption and integration of ICT in city master plans is vital in helping citizens to lead a better life.

Planning, implementing and managing ICT across cities is imperative to build technologically advanced smart cities. Cisco's service-delivery platform will play a strategic role in deploying smart services that will enable citizens of the future to live in greener, smarter, more secure and sustainable communities, he said.

Cisco has supported research by the International Data Corporation (IDC) on the topic of "Delivering Next-generation Citizen Services". The aim was to study how cities should be transformed into smart cities and what social, economic and environmental benefits would result.

IDC Asia Pacific's associate vice president Philip Carter said that in building a city of the future, technologies would play an important role in helping to achieve sustainable urbanisation. The technologies include hardware, software and networks as well as services within the ICT ecosystem that IDC calls "Intelligent X". These are defined as integrated technology areas including smart devices using machine-to-machine and telemetry capabilities; high-speed ubiquitous communications networks; and intelligent software and services to process, consolidate, and analyse data in order to transform industry-specific business processes.

Cisco Systems (Thailand)'s managing director Tatchapol Poshyanonda said Cisco's Smart+Connected Communities initiative aimed to help transform physical communities into connected communities that would achieve economic, social and environmental sustainability. The company's role is to create solutions that can help with planning and will perform day-to-day operations and community management.

Smart+Connected Communities use intelligent networking capabilities to weave together people, services, community assets and information into a single pervasive solution. However, transforming a community into a smart city requires the collaboration of the government, the public and the private sector.

Cisco's connected-community blueprint shows how technology can be used in every aspect of service delivery within a community; in homes and businesses, in towns and city centres, and in supporting transport networks. The blueprint is aimed at senior business and technical-management stakeholders within councils and local partners who are responsible for delivering services.

Tatchapol said every local authority had a vision for the community it served. The blueprint describes how a very broad range of connectivity technologies can deliver connected homes, businesses, city centres, transport, policing, learning and healthcare.

He said Thailand had six big cities that were being urbanised and the government could decide that they should become smart cities. Cisco (Thailand) is ready to provide consultations as well as solutions and systems implementation.

At the end of July, Cisco Systems (Thailand) completed its 2010 fiscal year. It recorded 36-per-cent growth in overall revenue, while its business in the government sector grew by 26 per cent and that in the service-provider sector grew by 85 per cent.

"Our approach to the Smart+Connected Communities concept is to align with the government's national-broadband project as well as the country's national ICT policy framework from 2011 to 2020, called Smart Thailand 2020," Tatchapol said.