FIWARE Mexico aims at enhancing FIWARE-driven collaboration between EU and Mexico, based on the adoption, deployment and improvement of FIWARE in Mexico as a framework that will open up new horizons for future cooperation in the ICT domain. The Mexican FIWARE Lab node operated by INFOTEC is part of the FIWARE infrastructure, which facilitates the use of the FIWARE platform for local innovative players. However, to bring new Mexican players into the FIWARE arena and create a sustainable collaborative environment between Europe and Mexico, it is necessary to set and manage the proper conditions needed to support the pillars of FIWARE in Mexico to go beyond the Lab initiative. FIWARE Mexico proposes a new approach to actively and strategically engage all relevant stakeholders in supporting the uptake of FIWARE technologies for sustainable collaboration between EU and Mexico. The project will establish Working Groups to engage innovators from the industry, research communities and end users, such as Smart Cities players, in the FIWARE ecosystem. In parallel, dedicated FIWARE technology’ training programmes will be implemented for developers, integrators and contributors, embracing the whole open source community, which will facilitate the adoption of FIWARE technologies and the development of applications to be commercialized in Mexico and EU. Also FIWARE Mexico will focus on key aspects that until now have only partly been addressed in the EU-Mexico policy dialogue, such as the identification of ICT priorities and FIWARE topics of strategic interest for future R&I collaboration. The FIWARE Mexico consortium is in a unique position to leverage the required expertise, foster engagement with key players, ensure a shared vision, encourage networking, reach a wide range of policy-makers, industrial and economic leaders throughout EU and Mexico, and mobilize resources towards result-oriented actions that will significantly reinforce the EU-Mexico collaboration in FIWARE.

SmartSDK aims at creating a sustainable FIWARE ecosystem between Europe and Mexico by leveraging on existing FIWARE outcomes and building reference standards for common challenges. To fulfil this goal, SmartSDK will analyse successful FIWARE applications deployed in Europe and derive from these applications a set of FIWARE-based reference service architectures and reference data models to support the agile development of smart solutions for sustainability challenges of today world. In this perspective, SmartSDK will adopt existing Open Standards and Open Source solutions leveraging on results of European and Mexican initiatives based on FIWARE. By “standardizing” these efforts in a reference Software Development Kit (SDK) for smart applications, SmartSDK will foster a long-term collaboration between Europe and Mexico on FIWARE building on shared societal and economical challenges in Europe and Mexico. The collaboration will promote increased FIWARE adoption in Mexico as ecosystem for developing smart solutions, through the involvement of cities, innovative SMEs and startups. This will insure a wide impact in Mexico and Europe and will support the growth of new FIWARE-based businesses through the direct involvement of a network of around ICT 30 incubators and accelerators with access to more than 1000 ICT Innovative companies and startups and the support of Wayra Mexico (owned by Telefonica), the local branch of the worldwide largest accelerator. The participation of key FIWARE partners in Europe (TID, CREATE-NET) and Mexico (INFOTEC, ITESM), the support of European startups building on FIWARE technology (HOPU, UBI), and Future Internet researchers from Mexico (CECISE, CENIDET, INAOE) under the experienced guide of R&D consultancy specialist and key promoter of FIWARE internationalization (MARTEL) are a unique asset for ensuring SmartSDK success.

Digital technologies underpin innovation and competitiveness across a broad range of market sectors. A key technology to boost such innovation and competitiveness is represented by the full and wide adoption of Open Service Platforms. In fact, they will allow increased competition and market penetration because they should be built on top of royalty-free open specifications, adopting open source reference implementations, and s such allowed to be offered by multiple vendors. The Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technology Development (FP7) has developed the FIWARE platform which has demonstrated its potential of becoming a service platform of choice, with proven potential for usage by SMEs and startups. This rises to the extent that four main ICT players in Europe with global ambition have put FIWARE in their strategy for market development. More than that, those four players announced the creation of an open to all legal entity, the FIWARE Foundation, to have more stakeholders driving the evolution of FIWARE. Well in this scope, the aim of the FI-NEXT project is to put in place all the measures necessary in order to make FIWARE materializing such a potential. This will achieved pursuing the following objectives: a) bringing FIWARE from an European Open Source project to a global Open Source Community, b) ensuring FIWARE meets the highest quality standards and best technical support, c) positioning FIWARE as the de facto standard for the development of smart applications, and d) ensuring FIWARE Lab to be a self-sustainable environment.

SynchroniCity represents the first attempt to deliver a Single Digital City Market for Europe by piloting its foundations at scale in 11 reference zones - 8 European cities & 3 more worldwide cities - connecting 34 partners from 11 countries over 4 continents. Building upon a mature European knowledge base derived from initiatives such as OASC, FIWARE, FIRE, EIP-SCC, and including partners with leading roles in standardization bodies, e.g. ITU, ETSI, IEEE, OMA, IETF, SynchroniCity will deliver a harmonized ecosystem for IoT-enabled smart city solutions where IoT device manufacturers, system integrators and solution providers can innovate and openly compete. With an already emerging foundation, SynchroniCity will establish a reference architecture for the envisioned IoT-enabled city market place with identified interoperability points and interfaces and data models for different verticals. This will include tools for co-creation & integration of legacy platforms & IoT devices for urban services and enablers for data discovery, access and licensing lowering the barriers for participation on the market. SynchroniCity will pilot these foundations in the reference zones together with a set of citizen-centred services in three high-impact areas, showing the value to cities, businesses and citizens involved, linked directly to the global market. With a running start, SynchroniCity will serve as lighthouse initiative to inspire others to join the established ecosystem and contribute to the emerging market place. SynchroniCity takes an inclusive approach to grow the ecosystem by inviting businesses and cities to join through an open call, allowing them to participate on the pioneering market place enabling a second wave of successful pilots. They will strengthen the ecosystem by creating a positive ripple effect throughout Europe, and globally, to establish a momentum and critical mass for a strong European presence in a global digital single market of IoT-enabled solutions.