AWS Cloud technology offering massive benefits to auto industry, says expert
The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud technology is benefiting the automotive industry in five areas: agility, elasticity, global reach, cost and innovation, said Jon Allen, director of AWS Cloud's professional services for the automotive industry.
“When you look at what’s happening in the auto industry today, what they really need is the ability to scale. What we're seeing today, with complex data analytics and complex models around, an autonomous vehicle and driver assistance that really requires the ability to provision and scale quickly,” he added.
The original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have not had the opportunity for that kind of computing power before. It would take weeks to be able to run a complex model and now they can do it in days, he said.
“As for elasticity, we only see the largest automakers able to invest in the future of high-processing computing and data analytics. Now, we are seeing so many new and smaller companies coming in. They use the elasticity, the agility of AWS, to build and be able to scale quicker than before.
“The second part I'd talk about is global reach. When you see companies like Volkswagen and their effort for the digital production platform to connect the factories at scale. To be able to connect 160 factories around the world, they really need that global reach to be able to do that. AWS has 24 regions and 77 availability zones. We really scale-out that reach closer to what VW is trying to do with their factories worldwide.
"In fact, nine of those 22 regions are right there in Asia. That allows customers to be closer to data centres to improve licensees and to be able to affect quicker run time with what they are trying to do," Allen said.
As for innovation, he said automakers today want to differentiate their businesses. They want to build and give their customers new experiences, not just about their back-room data centres.
“What we are able to do is help our customers innovate not only through the Cloud but also through 125 services that we have. It's exciting that we are able to do that,” Allen added.
Talking about the automotive industry in the near and long-term future, Allen quoted AWS customer Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors as saying that the next five years will see more disruptions than in the past five years.
"We have seen a lot of disruption in the last couple of years. What we are seeing right now in the near-term is that the automotive industry is getting much more connected," Allen said.
He added that carmakers are becoming far more focused on customers and what they want from their vehicle. The long-term vision they have is that they want to be more than just a hardware provider for the industry. They want to be part of creating new applications and new experiences for the customers.
“So in the long-term, they are going to continue to disrupt. Companies or OEMs that have adopted the Cloud strategy are really able to introduce new capabilities. Think about quantum computing, high-process computing that is using the power of the Cloud to give a better customer experience.”
He said that we are going to see advanced driver assistance, which will lead to much more autonomous vehicles.
“In order to do that, you need a large computing capacity, a lot of storage, to make that happen. Our automotive customers are using these capabilities at AWS to make that happen,” he said.
Allen added that AWS is extending its presence in the region and it’s fascinating to see the adoption of technology in Thailand in the past couple of years.
“We want the automotive industry to build on AWS. We want our current auto customers to have the best experience using our services to build and transform the automotive industry. In the end, we want automotive customers to have the best experiences with the automotive maker through AWS.”
A couple of years ago, AWS launched the Connected Vehicle reference architecture, which is its first solution on how to connect vehicles to the Cloud.
"And then we launched the Connected Mobility solution. That has improved from the Connected Vehicle reference architecture. It allows new capabilities such as vehicle health, location of the vehicle, and battery monitoring.
“Another is WaveLength, which connects the 5G network to AWS Cloud. What WaveLength does is generally there are five hubs between the tower that connects 5G to the Cloud. WaveLength reduces it to three. We are able to work with our partners such as Verizon and telecom providers around the world to be able to implement 5G to WaveLength. So those are some new services that we currently have."
