Brenda Marie Rivers
Amazon Web Services and the Arizona State University opened a new facility that will house efforts to harness cloud computing for the development of community-focused smart technologies.
The ASU Smart City Cloud Innovation Center Powered by AWS is located at the ASU SkySong facility in Scottsdale, Ariz., and will include AWS staff responsible for providing technical, management and operational guidance, AWS said Wednesday.
The center’s creation comes as part of ASU and AWS’ long-term efforts to support designers of smart city projects, develop technology alternatives and promote economic growth in the Scottsdale region.
“We’ll combine public-sector knowledge of the community and its challenges with the expertise of ASU’s faculty, staff and students, and use AWS technologies to solve those challenges,†said Ben Butler, global lead of AWS cloud innovation centers, worldwide public sector.
Butler added that the CIC team will use open-source software and share resulting prototypes and developments with other communities in need of related technologies.
ASU and AWS will launch an Innovation Challenge in May in support of the new center.
