Driving digital and sustainable progress in automotive solutions

AWS utilises transformative digital technologies to accelerate the automotive industry’s development whilst striving for sustainable practices. Customers bring advanced and differentiated products and services to market faster and more cost effectively through AWS.

AWS (Amazon Web Services) is the world’s most broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 200 fully-featured services from data centres. Ajit Kolhe is the World Wide Partner Lead for Automotive.

“I’m responsible for working with Partners to build and scale market differentiating solutions to solve customers’ unique business challenges,” Kolhe explains. “Our automotive customers consist of four sub-industries within AWS: original equipment manufacturers; tier one suppliers; AutoTech/startups; and auto dealers. These include customers such as Toyota, Continental, Uber, MOIA, and Cox Automotive.”

Automotive industry solutions

AWS’ partnership with TCS dates back to 2009. “It’s been a great journey – TCS is a strategic global system integrator and premier consulting partner in AWS’ partner network.”

Together, AWS and TCS have been focused on migrating critical workloads and transforming IT, with the two having had over 700 customer engagements.

& automotive solutions

“AWS has evolved the cloud adoption framework, placing emphasis on business outcomes which aligns with TCS’ strategy,” says Kolhe.

Over the last two years, the team has built several solutions applicable in the automotive industry, including TCS Autoscape™ which covers autonomous vehicles, ADAS scenarios, connected vehicle solutions, software defined vehicles and TCS Clever Energy™ for sustainability. AWS contributes to innovation with TCS and has a roadmap of seven TCS solutions that will help to solve customers’ business imperatives.

According to Kolhe, the success of such a partnership can be characterised as an alignment around customer obsession, thinking big and mutual trust.

“We have both earned trust in our relationships and have alignment across both organisations which spans across the customer engagements,” says Kolhe.

“A classic illustration of how EVs have forced the development of digital-led ecosystems is in the way they are powered. Conventional fuelling did not have an organic need for digital systems. Charging networks and management, on the other hand, have been fundamentally based on digital operating models. Data from EVs and EV battery management systems, and its efficient utilisation, is more critical to the long-term adoption and viability of EVs, compared to their ICE predecessors,” says Parthasarathy.

As the digital ecosystem evolves, technology and automation enable more possibilities for charging solutions in the urban environment that defy the conventional format of designated fuelling areas. While it is critical to supply such services, drivers and businesses also have the flexibility to choose other options, such as charging at a restaurant, at home, at work, or in the car park at a shopping centre.

According to Parthasarathy, the digital ecosystem also enables a smoother transition from internal combustion ehicles (ICVs), which follow a traditional power format.

“For example, one of the biggest concerns is around range anxiety and the need to provide, in real-time, the accurate range left on the vehicle. And with the entry of non-traditional players into the charging ecosystem, we now have access to chargers at restaurants, grocery stores, hotels etc, where one can seamlessly reserve and charge their vehicles, unlike the gas-stationsonly option to fill ICVs,” Parthasarathy says.

“This opens a whole new digital ecosystem to enable customers to find charging stations, reserve them and complete the entire commercial transaction around it.”

Industries that were not previously associated with mobility are crosspollinating and electrification is providing them with commercial opportunities to leverage charging as a competitive advantage, which also supports the shift away from fossil fuels.

Digital transformation empowers e-mobility

When looking at how digital technology serves consumers today, it’s important to understand their current interactions. Before exploring how technology can be leveraged to meet the needs of an evolving industry, leaders first need to be aware of the ‘social customer’, which Parthasarathy explains is a term coined to represent how users respond to a product or service.

These days, technologies are intertwined with social media as an integral part of consumers, whereby they are likely to turn to