Skip to main content

ITS industry must 'open up', says Swarco chief

Proprietary tech needs to be made available to others, says Michael Schuch
By Adam Hill November 10, 2020 Read time: 1 min
Swarco's Michael Schuch: 'We need to evolve from traffic management to travel management'

The ITS industry needs to open up if it is to evolve, according to Michael Schuch, COO of Swarco Group.

In a panel discussion on day one of the first Virtual ITS European Congress yesterday, he said that companies would need to relax their grip on some proprietary technologies in order to take advantage of opportunities which will only come through collaboration.

"We need to prepare to open up," he insisted, saying that it was important to embrace the contributions of new players.

For seamless integration along the whole mobility value chain, "the industry needs to make a move towards each other".

"The key is that interoperability and collaboration is happening."

"We need to evolve from traffic management to travel management," he continued.

It would be important in future "to ensure the orchestration of different modes by balancing individual and collective needs".

"Don't look at disruption as a threat but as an opportunity," Schuch concluded.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • The control room revolution - LCD screens and IP technology
    July 17, 2012
    Coming soon to a screen near you: Brady O. Bruce and John Stark of Jupiter Systems discuss trends in control room technologies. Perhaps the single most important trend in the control room environment over the last 12-18 months has been the accelerated move towards the adoption of flat-screen Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) technology. Having made their presence felt in the home environment, where they continue to replace outdated cathode ray tube-based technology, LCDs have reached the point where their perfor
  • Kapsch says US purchase will have world-wide impact
    June 3, 2014
    Peter Ummenhofer, head of the ITS Business Unit at Kapsch TrafficCom, discusses what the recent acquisition of US ATMS specialist Transdyn will mean for the company and the ITS sector. Even a brief perusal of Kapsch’s portfolio lends credence to the company’s assertion that it is more than ‘just a tolling systems and services supplier’. Over the past few years, the company has added road safety enforcement to its offering with significant commercial vehicle operations capabilities, including weigh in motion
  • Standardise global ITS protocols to enable interoperability
    January 26, 2012
    ITS America has a new chief technology officer. ITS International caught up with Nu Rosenbohm at this year's World Congress to gather his thoughts on the main challenges at home and abroad
  • Connecting people and mobility
    February 3, 2012
    Stéphane Petti, Business Development Manager - Automotive, at Orange Business Services' International M2M Center, says that the ITS industry can no longer afford to ignore the telecommunications industry's role in connecting people and mobility services. To telephone companies (telcos), the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) sector is nothing new. Worldwide, they have been focusing considerable attention on M2M in all its sub-segments for several years now. It is the migration of M2M from fixed to wireless connectivi