IBM and Contact Light to work on smart city software solutions

Contact Light, a subsidiary of Australian digital transit-media firm XTD, has entered a partnership with software giant IBM to develop and roll out solutions for smart cities.

The agreement will see IBM combine its cloud technology suite and software-as-a-service offerings with the Aussie company’s smart city expertise.

Contact Light develops digital solutions to address unique opportunities for governments, city planners and large enterprise organisations to better understand how people interact with their evolving urban environments.

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Contact Light CEO Mike Boyd said: “IBM is committed to creating smarter cities. For example, earlier this month IBM and Apple announced a major partnership focusing on machine learning via the IBM Watson platform, which will provide continuous learning capabilities for apps such as Embark.”

Embark is a mobile app that connects commuters with real-time public transport information and covers more than 1,200 cities worldwide.

Anthone Withers, IBM’s Head of SaaS, A/NZ, added: “Our agreement with Contact Light is an example of how IBM is restructuring its partner engagement model and focusing on solutions which provide artificial intelligence, cloud, blockchain and security delivered as a service.

“I see great opportunity in the ability to measure, communicate and commercially transact with people using transit environments via their mobile devices.”

XTD’s acquisition of Contact Light, incidentally, is still subject to shareholder approval.