To maximize its potential, software defined vehicle The (SDV) revolution sweeping across the automotive industry has led to an increased reliance on the cloud. Even as new generations of cars incorporate supercomputer-level processing power, enabling exciting new services from enhanced multimedia to autonomous driving requires and the two-way flow of information from the cloud to the car. .
Delivering these new capabilities will require a combination of proficiency in both automotive and cloud technology, and the best of both worlds.
“The industry is recognizing that the automobile can be a place where we can combine the best of the physical and digital worlds,” said Wendy Bauer, general manager of automotive and manufacturing at the company. says. Amazon Web Services (AWS).
As Bauer said in a video podcast recorded at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show:Her team in Las Vegas is dedicated to providing automakers with all the tools they need to create the best-of-both-world experiences that car buyers have begun to expect and demand.
Watch “Get In: The Software-Defined Vehicle Podcast from BlackBerry” Season 2, Episode 5 below.
“We always want to have a deep focus on industry trends along the entire value chain, from end customers and OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) to auto retailers and everywhere in between. ,” says Bauer. “We also clearly recognize that speed of innovation is key.”
Rapid innovation has been the name of the game in the technology world for decades, but that agility doesn’t always come naturally to industrial and manufacturing sectors. This is where the flexibility and scalability of the cloud becomes a game changer.
“At AWS, we are focused on giving our customers and partners the tools to accelerate innovation, but we also want to enable them to focus their resources on their points of differentiation. Now software is becoming that.”
Essentially, automakers are realizing that they need to reposition themselves as software companies. “But how do you do this?” Bauer asks. “How do you develop a different culture? What does that mean for your company?”
This is no easy task, but AWS can help. “In our role, we work with some of the biggest car companies around the world, as well as start-ups across the value chain, who are looking at different ways to make this happen. Bauer says. “We often see AWS talk about the phrase ‘Culture, Trust, and Collaboration,’ but we may not understand what it means.”
Changing culture, gaining trust, and creating a path to meaningful collaboration all require a deep understanding of customer needs and finding ways to meet them. “We listen to our customers and listen to the problems they want us to solve, many of which are now becoming very industry-specific,” Bauer said. says. “In healthcare, automotive, industrial, and financial services, we need to know the disruptive issues in our industries and their pain points so we can find ways to help.
“So we talk about automotive-specific products. We think about how complex automotive technology and automotive software is. Before we get to the applications and everything that’s in the car, we need to understand the tool chain. is incredibly complex just to manage.”
Cloud infrastructure and underlying software platforms and support systems can effectively provide solutions to this complexity. Doing so actually frees automakers from having to build out the underlying software and architectural support structures, allowing them to focus on more important brand-defining technologies.
“We want to do the heavy lifting,” Bauer explains, so automakers can focus on developing software features that appeal to consumers. This also makes sense for OEMs, which are traditionally partner-averse. Because the back-end software “heavy lifting” part of his stack is not the point of differentiation, and it’s not the application that truly delights the customer. That is what allows it to come to life. That’s exactly what we’re focused on. ”
Find the right partner
To establish a role in the automotive value chain, AWS needed a partner with deep, industry-specific expertise in automotive software. The ideal partner will bring years of experience and an extensive intellectual property portfolio focused on delivering purpose-built automotive solutions. In particular, partners need to be established, respected suppliers in the highly regulated automotive industry, where safety is always paramount. They found such a partner in his BlackBerry.
“We have a lot of great partners in the industry ecosystem that we are working to support,” Bauer said. “Our relationship with BlackBerry is a great example of how we think about strategic industry partners that our customers can retain over the long term.”
This spirit of symbiotic collaboration led to the birth of BlackBerry IVY®, a jointly developed in-vehicle software platform that enables automakers and their partners to more easily leverage vehicle data and innovate more effectively. It led to BlackBerry IVY software abstracts data collected in and out of the vehicle, enabling processing both at the “edge” and in the cloud.
The partnership between BlackBerry and AWS to develop IVY™ is specifically aimed at leveraging the potential of ubiquitous cloud connectivity. However, this change is still in its early stages. “It’s still early days for what’s possible, and we’re very excited,” Bauer said.
“At AWS, we always say it’s Day One.”