BMW Group Announces Partnership With AWS
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BMW Group Announces Partnership With AWS

Photo by:   BMW AG
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Alejandro Enríquez By Alejandro Enríquez | Journalist and Industry Analyst - Wed, 12/09/2020 - 05:50

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and BMW Group announced today a strategic collaboration to accelerate the auto group's path toward innovation by placing data and analytics as to the cornerstone of its decision-making processes. “The BMW Group is driving digitalization and innovation in the automotive industry,” said Alexander Buresch, CIO and Senior Vice President of BMW Group IT, in a statement. “We are making data central to the way we work and we look forward to collaborating with AWS to merge our talents, continuing to raise the bar for innovation among automakers and delivering exciting new experiences for our customers around the world.”

The collaboration scheme implies both companies combining their strength to develop cloud-based IT and software solutions to increase efficiency, performance, and sustainability across all company processes, going from aftersales services to vehicle development. Three major strategies encompass the collaboration between AWS and BMW Group. First, the group announced a massive data migration from all its business units and operations in more than 100 countries to AWS. This will enable the so-called "Cloud Data Hub of the BMW Group," a central platform for managing data solutions in the cloud that will help corporate divisions to implement data-driven applications. The order of this operation is of several petabytes of data that will be used to gain insights through machine learning applications, demand forecasting, sales optimization, and purchasing planning. The second element of this partnership is the qualification of 5,000 software engineers in AWS. More than 2,000 of them will be certified in AWS, emphasizing machine learning, and data analytics.

BMW will also take its PartChain platform to the next level. PartChain was developed by the group to trace auto parts and raw materials throughout the value chain using blockchain technologies. By using AWS, "the Group will be able to analyze vehicle data to predict the operating characteristics of parts, proactively make maintenance recommendations and inform parts suppliers about potential problems in their manufacturing processes, thus improving quality," said the company in a statement.

“AWS provides the most comprehensive suite of cloud offerings to enable automakers to build applications that touch every point in the customer’s journey. By combining the domain expertise of the BMW Group with AWS’ demonstrated leadership in the cloud, we are expanding our impact across the automotive industry so that stakeholders, from parts manufacturers to mechanics, can benefit from greater visibility and insights,” said Matt Garman, Vice President of Sales and Marketing of AWS in a statement.

This is not the first partnership AWS makes with a major automotive group. Earlier this year, Volkswagen announced the launch of its Industrial Cloud with AWS through which industrial software applications will optimize processes at its 18 manufacturing locations. In August, Toyota Motor Corporation also broadened its partnership with AWS in Toyota's Mobility Services Platform, which will serve as an ecosystem for Toyota's engineers to handle "the next generation" of data-driven mobility services.

Photo by:   BMW AG

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