Wazzup Pilipinas!
Renault-Nissan
is first auto manufacturer to commit to platform to build connected cars
Traditional automakers, many of whom ushered in an era of
incredible disruption nearly a century ago, now face disruption themselves from
four modern forces — connected, autonomous, shared and electric cars. The
infrastructure and scale required to build a connected car is incredibly complicated,
expensive and resource intensive. At its core, it’s a software challenge, and a
chief obstacle for these brands is integrating the complex cloud technology
required to deliver next-generation driving experiences.
Today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, we announced
the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform, a set of services built on the
Microsoft Azure cloud and designed
to empower auto manufacturers to create custom connected driving experiences. This is not an in-car operating system or a “finished product;”
it’s a living, agile platform that starts with the cloud as the foundation and
aims to
address five core scenarios that our partners have told us are key priorities: predictive maintenance, improved in-car
productivity, advanced navigation, customer insights and help building
autonomous driving capabilities.
Microsoft’s
cloud will do the heavy lifting by ingesting huge volumes of sensor and usage data from
connected vehicles, and then helping automakers apply that data in powerful
ways.
Available as a public preview later this year, it brings Microsoft's
intelligent services from across the company right into the car, including
virtual assistants, business applications, office services and productivity
tools like Cortana, Dynamics, Office 365, Power BI and Skype for Business.
Today, the
car is more than just a ride between two places — it is a hub of activity for
daily life. People are looking to have truly connected experiences in
their cars so that they can get more done, save time and make life easier. While
safety and security are baseline requirements, our services can help make a
person’s work day more efficient. For instance, imagine that Cortana seamlessly connects you whether you’re at home or in your
car. Let's say you're on your phone at home and tell Cortana to set up a
meeting for you and your colleague the next morning at a coffee shop. The next
time you get in your car, Cortana reminds you of the morning meeting and starts
navigation to get you to that coffee shop.
Check out our video below to hear more about how the platform works
and the benefits it offers to automakers and drivers.
Auto manufacturers
embrace Microsoft’s technology
Our strength in building a global cloud at scale is the primary
reason the Renault-Nissan Alliance chose to work with Microsoft, becoming the
first auto manufacturer to commit to the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform.
Today in Nissan’s
CES keynote, the company announced
that through our partnership
with the Renault-Nissan Alliance,
our platform will
power next-generation, connected vehicles with advanced navigation, predicative
maintenance, remote monitoring of car features and more. Nissan also demonstrated
on stage how Cortana can enhance a driver’s experience. In addition, Azure offers the flexibility and choice to build a
common platform for Renault-Nissan to deploy services to both Alliance brands
by supporting devices and vehicles that run on multiple operating systems,
programming languages and tools.
This
partnership builds on our recent momentum with other automotive companies, such
as our announcement this past week with Volvo
to integrate Skype for Business in Volvo’s 90 Series cars, which will enhance productivity and make joining conference calls
from the car a cinch. And we’ve partnered with BMW on BMW
Connected, the automaker’s personal mobility companion
service, to develop a scalable platform based on Microsoft Azure technologies
to deliver in-car productivity services through Office 365, as well as
intelligent personal assistance for drivers.
Microsoft
a partner instead of a competitor
As you may have gathered, Microsoft is not building its own
connected car. Instead, we
want to help automakers create connected car solutions that fit seamlessly with
their brands, address their customers’ unique needs, competitively
differentiate their products and generate new and sustainable revenue streams.
Our customers have shared that they want to work with a partner that not only
offers the right tools, but also allows them to keep their data, has a secure
and compliant cloud platform, and operates at a truly global scale (given that
most automotive brands operate in more than one country). In fact, 85 percent
of Fortune 500 companies already rely on Microsoft’s cloud for these reasons.
Using our platform, automakers and suppliers can benefit from the
billions of dollars we’ve already invested in the cloud. Azure offers more than
200 services available in 38 worldwide datacenter regions, with robust measures
for security and the global compliance and privacy regulations that are
required to support connected cars, letting automakers focus on innovation
rather than building out their own cloud-based infrastructure.
Ultimately, Microsoft aspires to empower automakers in their goals
for fully autonomous driving, with sophisticated machine learning and
artificial intelligence capabilities, as well as advanced mapping services. In
fact, just last
month we announced that through new and existing relationships with TomTom,
HERE and Esri, together we will create more intelligent
location-based services across Microsoft.
As a company, it’s our mission to empower all industries and
businesses not only to survive disruption, but to seize it as an opportunity.
The investments we’re making in the automotive space extend to countless other
industries, such as financial services, manufacturing and smart cities.
Wherever there’s a “connected signal,” Microsoft wants to be the partner that
can help its customers improve people’s lives — on the road, in the cloud and
everywhere in between.
Happy New Year and happy driving!
Written by: Peggy Johnson, Executive Vice President, Business Development
Ross is known as the Pambansang Blogger ng Pilipinas - An Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Professional by profession and a Social Media Evangelist by heart.
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