Business Applications

Automakers need to consider four domains of digital transformation for applications:

Core IT Transformation - Digital process will drive the need to adopt digital platforms, either through the the re-platform of applications, introducing SaaS applications, or APIs to surround legacy applications.

Customer Experience - By 2025, online purchases could account for 37% of new car sales to individuals in Europe. However, around 70% of car buyers still consider the dealer a touch point to physically experience the car. Online sales and service will require websites, CRM, remote servicing and analytics.

Mobility Services & Connected Car - By 2025 more than 40% of the vehicle pool is Internet-connected. Subscription-based services will represent about 20% of the total market by 2025. Providing mobility services on-demand will require an intelligent platform and integration with the connected car.

Software-Defined Car architectures - Today’s cars have up to 100 million lines of code, by 2030 this could be 300 million lines. Up to 30% of a vehicle’s total costs are expected to be driven by software & electronics. A typical new-generation vehicle likely has a software architecture composed of five or more domains, together comprising hundreds of functional components in the car and in the cloud. These cover everything from infotainment and ADAS to mapping, telematics, and third-party applications.

Compute & Cloud

Cloud adoption is growing fast across the automotive industry as the OEMs transform their operations, dealers shift to online sales, and autonomous & connected vehicles generate huge amounts of data.

McKinsey estimates cloud can reduce costs between 5-20% depending on the function (supply chain, manufacturing, marketing & sales and business support represent the highest potential cost savings).

Automakers are recognising they need to skills (or partners) to operate an environment that not only manages the cloud infrastructure but allows the ease of moving workloads to and from different clouds. Cloud providers are also introducing automotive specific cloud services, for instance, Microsoft has introduced a Connected Vehicle Platform (MCVP), which includes 40 Azure-powered cloud services that have been tailored for vehicles. As a consequence, we partnerships form between cloud providers and OEMs.  For instance, VW partnered with Microsoft to create an Automotive Cloud and with AWS to create an Industrial Cloud.

Digital Workplace

Automotive businesses must embed digital tools into the workplace to support employees to operate efficiency and collaboratively. As well as access to critical application the employees also need access to HR applications and business applications such as e-mail, instant messaging and virtual meeting tools.

Security, Compliance & Data Privacy

 The transformation of the auto industry towards ACE vehicles, the adoption of Industry 4.0, and the advent of digital-first dealership and shared mobility services will drive a huge investment in digital technology. These will create a huge number of new attack surfaces including:

Connected Cars – these could contain up to 300 million lines of code and many points of attack.

Mobility Services & Connected Car Cloud – these will hold personal & payment information that needs protecting as well as routes to attack the connected car.

Dealer websites and online services – these will contain personal & payment information and services like remote diagnostics could be used to reach the vehicle.

Industry 4.0 – IoT sensors, artificial intelligence and robotics used in production and supply chain ops and OT devices come under attack.

Design & Engineering – a source of intellectual property.

Remote & mobile workers.