The Record - Issue 19: Winter 2020

I NT E R V I EW www. t e c h n o l o g y r e c o r d . c om 72 The software- defined vehicle Alex Smith spoke to Heiko Huettel, Microsoft’s head of automotive for EMEA, about the trends and technology that are transforming transforming a region at the forefront of vehicle innovation BY A L E X SM I TH W hat challenges and opportunities do you see currently in the EMEA auto- motive market? Our biggest challenge in this space is driving transformation for our customers. Current car companies need to be more cloud- and software- enabled and providing the base layer for this effort is one of our most important tasks. Software enablement involves bringing more generic compute and more centralised compute to in-vehicle architecture. This means less wir- ing and consequently less hardware, with more functions built into software. We have seen this in smartphones with the disappearance of phys- ical keyboards, and we’ll see physical elements in the car disappearing in the same way. It’s getting much cheaper and reduces time-to-business to implement differentiating features in software, and it lowers the cost of variations you need for each market. This so-called “software-defined vehicle” is a core strategic pillar in our efforts with our customers. The software-defined vehicle allows you to be agile with differentiating experiences. If you have physical buttons and single-function embedded software in the car, it’s likely that you cannot change the way the driver envisions them. If you have a software-defined approach you can change experiences over time and add value to the vehicle via OTA updates You joined Microsoft directly from a position within the automotive industry. What is it about the Microsoft offering you believe can offer automotive leaders the greatest competi- tive advantage? Alliances and partnerships are what Microsoft is all about. We want to join forces with the leading suppliers and systemintegrators tobring our cloud technologies to the car. Everything we’re seeing is bigger than one partner, including Microsoft, and we need to join forces across the board with com- panies to build an integrated platform based on open source and cloud technologies It’s one of the major reasons I joined Microsoft. It has a vision to help with the transformation of car companies, and a broad set of people with different mindsets and skills is needed to achieve it. To execute on this vision we are willing to bring together our best people with great knowl- edge from different industries. For example, we recently announced a use case with Mercedes- Benz USA, where connected remote experts with local technicians use Microsoft HoloLens to help them repair a car. We as Microsoft strive to achieve more for our customers by leveraging our technologies in the best way to enable our part- ners and our customers. Addressing the challenges of climate change is a topic for conversation throughout the auto- motive industry. Where are Microsoft solutions powering innovation for auto manufacturers to counter the effects of fossil fuel powered vehicles? Microsoft has committed to be carbon negative by 2030, and we are also helping our customers to meet their sustainability goals by leveraging “Alliances and partnerships are what Microsoft is all about”