• In order to achieve technological autonomy, Mexico joins the FIWARE ecosystem and opens the second and most important FIWARE Lab node.
• This process of integration will help Mexico to develop Smart Cities and cope with problems in the fields of safety, energy management, healthcare and logistics.
• Different support programs will help entrepreneurs to develop their FIWARE applications.

Mexico D.F., 22^nd of July 2015. Infotec will lead the integration of Mexico into the FIWARE ecosystem [fiware.org]. This process will include a plan to adopt open standards, thus easing the development of Smart Cities; the launch of a laboratory (linked to a sensor network) to do research on the Internet of the Future and an acceleration program to promote the development of startups using FIWARE. Furthermore, Mexico also opens the second and most important FIWARE Lab node, which will encourage entrepreneurs to experiment with FIWARE technologies. This group, led by Infotec, also includes entities such as Tecnológico de Monterrey, the Mexican Technology Platform, CENIDET, Grupo Plenum and CENTROGeo.

This collaboration is the first step towards an active participation and contribution of these ICT actors to maintain FIWARE. Infotec will be in charge of enhancing, maintaining and supporting key components of the platform, by creating the necessary teams and hosting training sessions. “Mexico has shown a strong commitment with FIWARE, which is a very remarkable step in the bilateral collaboration between Mexico and Europe”, states Juanjo Hierro, FIWARE Chief Architect, who shares the opinion that “there is a need for open standards, which will facilitate the creation of a market which is not constrained by a specific provider.”

FIWARE, a platform that was created in collaboration with the European Commission in 2011, aims at increasing the European GDP in a 0.24 % (28,000 €) by creating new job posts and enterprises based on the Internet of Things. That is the same purpose of FIWARE in Mexico. “There is no free platform that allows industries to develop applications based on the knowledge of universities and research centers”, says Hugo Estrada Esquivel, Research Coordinator in Infotec and leader of the Laboratorio Nacional del Internet del Futuro, which contains the Mexican FIWARE Lab node.

The platform facilitates the creation of an ecosystem to connect developers with a technology that will allow them to work on their ideas. The platform also targets clients, who can ask for applications; and investors, who will be able to accelerate its implementation in the market. In addition, the availability of FIWARE components as open-source code can ease both the adoption of the platform as a standard and the creation of an app market that draws the attention of investors. “It is a technology that gathers universities, enterprises, providers and clients and allows them to collaborate. It will have a huge impact on our local economy”, states the representative of Infotec. This system ensures technological autonomy and improves both Mexican entrepreneurship and innovation, by assembling different actors that used to work separately.

This agreement also includes the incorporation of some cities into the Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC) initiative. Thus, Mexico joins a project that already gathers 44 cities in 9 countries and that expects 50 cities to have joined by September, around 100 by end of the year. These cities are committed to use the same standards when developing solutions for Smart Cities. The initiative is aimed at transforming cities into engines of growth for their citizens. “Cities joining to the OASC initiative in Mexico will soon witness the impact of FIWARE, which will help them to make the most of their resources and energy, safety, healthcare and logistics systems. Thus, public authorities will save public resources”, says the representative of Infotec.

In order to carry out this plan successfully, organizations like Infotec in Mexico have to master this technology and be able to “organize training sessions and opportunities for entrepreneurs, industry, institutions and universities”, says Juanjo Hierro. “We must bet on a technology that can be supported locally in Mexico”. In order to achieve that goal, one of the first steps may be the implementation of an acceleration program by FIWARE.  Previous experience in Europe will help to promote FIWARE in Latin America. The participation of entities such as CONACYT or the Secretariat of Economy will also be very important for the implementation of funding programs and support entities, such as the Mexican Technology Platform (MTP). As an example, the FP7 CONECTA 2020 initiative, coordinated by Carmen Agüero and presented by Tecnológico de Monterrey, is disseminating the model of Technological Platforms in other Latin American countries, which is a good opportunity to promote FIWARE, considering that these technologies are based on ICT and the Internet of the Future.

Campus Party Mexico and Training Session for FIWARE Trainers

FIWARE will attend the next Campus Party Mexico from the 23^rd to the 26^th of July. During those days, it will launch the challenge “FIWARE IoT and Context Awareness Smart Apps #CPMX6”, with a prize of $170,000 for the best FIWARE context-aware applications making use of information of the Internet of Things. Furthermore, from the 20^th to the 22^nd of July, in Infotec, FIWARE will host a training session and conferences to present FIWARE, solutions for Smart Cities and the plans led by Infotec regarding promotion of FIWARE. “Having one of the biggest nodes in the world is worth nothing”, states Hugo Estrada Esquivel from Infotec, “if we do not show the advantages of the platform and train people to use it in their organizations.”