2016

19 Oct

ESPRIT of Tunisia selects QMIC’s Labeeb IoT Platform to Support its Students and Startup Projects

ESPRIT, a Tunisian school of engineering with multiple disciplines and different educational entities, and the Qatar Mobility Innovations Center (QMIC) at the Qatar Science and Technology park have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for ESPIRIT to adopt QMIC’s Labeeb IoT platform and to provide the platform as a service for its students and startups in support of IoT related academic courses and projects. .

Labeeb™ IoT is an Internet of Things applications enablement platform which has been developed by QMIC and initially launched in March 2016. The platform together with an extensive set of development kits and enablers will play a significant role in enabling developers, startups and enterprises to develop and deploy new IoT services and applications that serve different vertical markets quickly and at a lower R&D cost.

As part of the agreement, ESPRIT will be using Labeeb™ IoT platform in its IoT related programs and will work with QMIC on specific use cases that can lead to commercial solutions to the benefit of both parties.

Prof. Tahar Ben Lakhdar, CEO of ESPRIT said, “Esprit has been forging strategic partners with key actors in ICT, Eletromecanics, and Civil Engineering. These latter have greatly contributed to the excellence of our academics, most importantly, to a better preparation of the next generation of engineers and paving their way for a brilliant professional career. That is why we consider QMIC as a strategic partner in a booming and important field which is the Internet of Things. We are sure that the Labeeb IoT platform will help our students and instructors in mastering the IoT fundamentals and contribute in the improvement of this platform by adding innovative functionalities. This approach strengthens our motto “alternative learning”.”

Dr. Adnan Abu-Dayya, Executive Director & CEO of QMIC said, “We are excited with our partnership with a leading university in Tunisia such as ESPIRIT so that students and entrepreneurs in Tunisia can benefit from our easy to use and rich IoT platform and to join our growing eco-system of users and customers. As one of the leading pure-play IoT enterprises in the Arab Work, QMIC fully understands the complexity of and the opportunities associated with building IoT solutions and services. Hence, we are glad to deliver such expertise to university students and entrepreneurs in order to make it easier for them to take their ideas and projects to the market.”

The Labeeb IoT platform can facilitate the collection and storage of data from any object (or device), translate the data into actionable insights, and enable delivering a wide range of IoT services to various market segments like smart homes, healthcare, utilities, smart cities, and many other verticals.

In addition to the platform, the Labeeb IoT initiative provides different SDKs (software development kits), an application development environment, and online and customized training to facilitate the development of IoT services and to eventually create a community of developers and adopters of IoT services in the MENA region.

About QMIC:

The Qatar Mobility Innovations Center (QMIC) is the first independent innovations center in the region with a focus on developing and deploying smart mobility systems and services. QMIC’s main goal is to use locally engineered innovations and knowledge to create technology-based industries that address regional challenges and grow with mega projects in Qatar and the region. Since 2009, and through its focus, on distributed sensing, data collection & management, services creation and delivery, QMIC is becoming a national leader in the area of Internet of Things (IoT). In particular, QMIC has been leading in delivering IoT platforms, and IoT solutions and services in vertical domains including Intelligent Transport, Logistics & Telematics, Road Safety and Environment. Through its offices at the Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP), QMIC is working closely with key national partners and stakeholders to realize a market-focused innovations ecosystem in Qatar.

About ESPRIT:

The school of engineering “Esprit”, French acronym for “École Supérieure Privée d’Ingénierie et de Technologies”, was founded in 2003, and, in 2013, it got its engineering programs accredited by the CTI (Commission des Titres d’Ingénieur) and then awarded the EUR-ACE (EURopean ACcredited Engineer) Label, a certificate that reflects the highest quality in Engineering education. ESPRIT has built its reputation on excellence in Tunisia and in several sub-Saharan African countries; a stature undeniably bolstered by its close partnership with the business community and foreign universities. Esprit has adopted an original pedagogical approach named “Project/Problem Based Learning” and is member of an international initiative launched by Harvard and MIT named CDIO (Conceive Design Implement Operate). Esprit has also a Research & Development (R&D) Division, named Esprit-Tech, where various projects are undertaken under several advanced themes such as IoT, cloud computing, Pervasive computing, Sensors network, etc.

28 Mar

QMIC Launches the First IoT Platform Developed in the Region

Qatar Mobility Innovations Center (QMIC) announced the launch of the first Internet of Things (IoT) platform that was ever developed in Qatar and the region (Labeeb^™ IoT). The announcement was made during a press conference hosted at QMIC’s offices at the Qatar Science and Technology Park and which was attended by QMIC’s senior staff and a number of local media organizations.

The Labeeb IoT platform together with an extensive set of development kits and enablers will play a significant role in enabling developers, startups and enterprises to develop and deploy new IoT services and applications that serve different vertical markets quickly and at a lower R&D cost. Although the platform and its associated enablers are initially targeting research centers, entrepreneurs, and startups in Qatar and the Region, it can equally serve international markets from this stage and will be expanded later this year to focus on the important enterprise and the government sectors.

QMIC has been working in the area of IoT since its inception in 2009 as its original business plan was focused on collecting sensor data wirelessly and translating such data into services and applications that serve the need of different market segments such as transportation, health, utilities, etc. Subsequently, QMIC established market leadership by developing and deploying its own IoT services in the area of intelligent transport (Masarak^™), road safety (Salamtek^™), and environment (Hawa’ak^™). Using such expertise and experience, QMIC decided to develop and launch an IoT platform that can be used by third parties to develop their own services and applications. This innovations strategy of QMIC proved to be timely as the IoT is becoming one of the mega trends that will shape most industries in the coming few years. Hence, most industry analysts expect the impact of IoT to reach 4-11 Trillion dollars per year by 2025. This impact will be realized through a combination of improving efficiency and productivity and through the introduction of new services and business models.

On this occasion, Dr. Adnan Abu-Dayya, the Executive Director and CEO of QMIC said ”As the oldest regional start-up in the important area of IoT, we are very pleased to announce the availability of our Labeeb IoT platform and development tools; the first locally developed platform in the region. This is a key element of our enablement strategy where we want to enable local entrepreneurs, startups, researchers, and enterprises to play a bigger role in realizing the IoT business potential and in creating local digital businesses in the process of doing so. We are equally excited by the international dimension of this platform as it can be offered to global users as well. The launch today culminates few years of effort by our team at QMIC, and represents a milestone towards expanding the Labeeb IoT portfolio to allow monetization of IoT services and adding key enablers that support the needs of specific vertical markets”.

Dr. Abu-Dayya continued to say “We have been engaged in discussions with many potential partners in Qatar and we are encouraged by the level of interest and excitement that we have seen. Furthermore, we are pleased to report that many strat-ups, research teams, and individuals have already started using the current verion of Labeeb IoT to realize their innovative ideas and build their own IoT products and services”.

The Labeeb IoT platform can facilitate the collection and storage of data from any object (or device), translate the data into actionable insights, and enable delivering a wide range of IoT services to various market segments like oil & gas, healthcare, utilities, smart cities, and many other verticals.

In addition to the platform, the Labeeb IoT initiative provides different SDKs (software development kits), an application development environment, and online and customized training to facilitate the development of IoT services and to eventually create a community of developers and adopters of IoT services in the region.

The Labeeb IoT initiative will be used to set up an IoT Smart Living Lab which will allow QMIC and its partners to lead the industry in realizing the full potential of IoT technologies.