OpenDataSoft: An Open Data Portal Tailor-Made for Smart Cities

The core idea behind engaging in free climbing is to discover new ways to self-guide while ascending known paths on rocks hills and mountains. “I bring the spirit of this adventure sport to OpenDataSoft,” begins Jean- Marc Lazard, CEO, OpenDataSoft. An avid sports enthusiast and a free climber, Lazard continues, “A hiker in free climbing utilizes equipment only to prevent injury during falls and not to assist progress.” This approach is imbued into team management practices at OpenDataSoft where the company’s workforce embraces new challenges to discover new paths, however with prudence. “As a team we depend on each other, and our clients depend on us. Hence, whilst we challenge ourselves as individuals, we—at OpenDataSoft—ensure that even our customers make it safely to the top,” he adds.

Founded in 2011, the company works toward eliminating complexities faced during development of Smart City solutions. “Today’s vendors and government CIOs are confronted with adversities while applying a broad and top-down approach in their smart city planning,” explains Lazard. “This approach culminates in the form of technical complexity, organizational intricacies, and heavy expenses that can leave smart city innovation languishing on the drawing board.” Sidestepping some of these roadblocks, OpenDataSoft provides a turnkey SaaS platform that enables easy transformation of data into apps and innovative services. The platform serves as an open data portal and a smart city data hub that helps the government, citizens, and start-ups explore, visualize, share, and innovate ways to use data. “Our solution was created keeping in mind the heightened focus on IoT, open data, and smart city strategies that require ultra-simple access to all useful data,” asserts Lazard.

The OpenDataSoft Smart Cities platform handles large-scale, real-time data from IoT-enabled objects and infrastructure that play a pivotal role in smart city transformation. Apart from data management, the solution instantly transforms the datasets into easy-to-understand interactive data visualizations consisting of tables, graphs, charts, maps, and pictures. Furthermore, the platform’s API-centric design, featuring automatic generation of RESTful APIs, straightforward API customization, Swagger integration and a metering and payment option that monetizes data published via these APIs, adds to its customer friendliness.