Panasonic and Silver Spring Networks Extend Smart City Reach Through New Alliance

At CES 2017, Panasonic CityNOW, a business of Panasonic Corporation of North America, and Silver Spring Networks, Inc. announced a new go-to-market alliance that leverages Silver Spring's Starfishâ„¢ Internet of Things (IoT) platform and CityNOW's diverse portfolio of smart and sustainable solutions for cities, real estate developers, utilities, and other smart city customers. CityNOW integrates best-in-class Panasonic and third-party technologies across five smart city pillars: smart mobility, clean energy, city services, smart buildings, and health & wellness.
 
The alliance between Panasonic and Silver Spring Networks supports CityNOW's Safe and Smart Streets initiative, which turns a single-use asset often considered a liability-the street light-into a multi-use, highly valuable asset. The street light pole becomes the host for multiple smart and sustainable technologies with cross-cutting benefits: controllable smart LED lights that save energy and O&M costs, community WiFi, environmental sensing (e.g., temperature, air quality, light intensity), video cameras for public safety and parking/traffic management. Connected and controlled by an IoT backbone, Safe and Smart Streets transforms "just a light" into the smartphone of the streetscape.
 
Starfish, Silver Spring's standards-based IPv6 network and data platform, provides the flexibility today's cities need to help improve service levels, drive down operational costs, easily scale and expand smart city services on demand, and enable innovative services that can improve the living environment of millions of residents. Under the new agreement, Panasonic will offer Silver Spring's Starfish platform and SLV6 city management platform service models to its city and utility customers as part of its broader CityNOW integrated solutions portfolio.
 
Panasonic has deployed Silver Spring's Starfish platform to connect and control LED streetlights at Peña Station NEXT, a 400-acre, mixed-use transit-oriented development adjacent to Denver International Airport (DEN). Panasonic-the anchor corporate tenant at Peña-has partnered with the City and County of Denver, DEN, utility Xcel Energy, developer LC Fulenwider LLC, and other stakeholders to make Peña Station NEXT an iconic example of smart and sustainable solutions. This public-private partnership will utilize Peña as a test bed for technologies and business models before broader deployment throughout the Denver metro area and beyond.
 
Peña Station NEXT builds upon Panasonic's global smart city expertise, including Fujisawa Sustainable Smart Town, a Panasonic-led smart and sustainable development in Fujisawa, Japan, about 30 miles southwest of Tokyo. Peña Station NEXT is also home to the Panasonic Technology & Solutions Center, which opened in September 2016 and serves as the operations hub for Panasonic CityNOW and Panasonic Enterprise Solutions Company.
 
"Peña Station NEXT is a living smart city lab combining a variety of stakeholders and solutions to shape the definition of a modern, connected city-a city that is more predictive, adaptive, and responsive," said Jarrett Wendt, executive vice president of Panasonic Enterprise Solutions Company. "Nowhere does Panasonic's vision of creating 'a better life, a better world' come alive more than in a smart city context. We are proud to be making the smart city of tomorrow a reality in North America today, and look forward to collaborating with Silver Spring to deliver this transformation."
 
"As more cities want to join the new digital frontier, the landscape demands collaboration between best-in-class stakeholders to bring safety, transportation, and other departmental initiatives such as street lighting to life," said Brandon Davito, vice president of Smart Cities and Street Lights, Silver Spring Networks. "With Silver Spring's Starfish IoT platform, we're pleased to partner with a world-class leader such as Panasonic to help cities like Denver achieve their sustainable technology goals for better service to their citizens and business communities."
 
In addition to Denver and Fujisawa, Panasonic's smart city planning and integration efforts around the world include cities in Germany, France, China, Japan, and others. With over 24.9 million enabled devices delivered on five continents, Silver Spring's comprehensive and cost-effective network and data platform helps cities, utilities and companies reliably and securely connect things that matter.
 
Panasonic Corporation of North America | us.panasonic.com

Silver Spring Networks | www.ssni.com