Cloud technologies have more and more penetration and strength in various business activities, including automotive. Practical outcomes demonstrate: cloud technologies usage by car manufacturers is both simplifying a number of tasks and significantly lowering expenses. As the multi-faceted solution, computer cloud provides unique possibilities and advantages. Let us be specific.
Specialized «cloud» portals
Tata Motors is known automotive brand, whose employees use specialized portals, which were migrated to a cloud at the certain moment. Also with the help of these portals fleet owners can track all their vehicles in real time. Tata Motors reports that use of cloud web services has a positive influence on the entire company. Cloud solutions help implementing new infrastructure projects on short deadlines, starting from the planning stage and ending with the deployment.
Apart from Tata Motors employees, cloud tools are available to the company’s clients. Users can access Loyalty Portal, Key Accounts Portal and Telematics Portal.
Madhusudan Shekar, Tata Motors chief of IT solutions:
«Tata Motors cloud migration increased the working speed of business-critical services. In particular web hosting access got better, it became possible to use cloud storage and video library, to publish catalogues, etc. All this required (still does) the large and complex infrastructure; migration to a cloud easily solves the issue. In rapidly changing technological environment the possibility of “fast” experiments and deployment is the strategic advantage. Before using cloud solutions to launch new projects the company was frequently facing specific issues – permanent lack of resources was the most serious one. Now Tata Motors uses exactly as many resources as necessary. The tendency of significant decrease of expenses at projects’ deployment is generally joyful as well».
Pothole Alert
Here is another bright example of how important cloud usage could be. Jaguar and Land Rover, the daughter companies of Tata Motors, informed about the development of the new technology – that scans the road surface and alerts the drivers of dangerous spots. This technology will most assuredly be interesting for Russian motorists, since the problems of Russian roads are painfully familiar to everyone. Essentially the solution is defining locations of ditches, holes, open potholes and other rough spots in accordance with the pre-set categories and is alerting the closest vehicle. Specially designed sensors (so far available only on Range Rover Evoque and Discovery Sport models) monitor the surface under the wheels and define the trouble zone location via GPS. Depending on a severity of rough spot the suspension clearance can be modified in seconds, which makes the ride more comfortable due to highly efficient MagneRide system.
Jaguar / Land Rover work on the expansion of this technology features: data transfer directly to a cloud, so that the information (and alerts of an incoming danger) could be used by other vehicles. This will allow a driver to prepare for actions – for example, slowing the vehicle to avoid damage.
Tata Motors daughter companies, together with the authorities, work on a cloud-located digital map of rough roads. This map will help in assigning priorities in road maintenance works. This, in turn, will make such works as fast and efficient as possible. Future plans are to develop a system that will automatically guide a car out of rough spots, at the same time not becoming a danger for other traffic.
Today clouds not only help to improve the quality of provided services, to lower the expenses of businesses, to solve tasks non-solvable before – they help to decrease the road risks, saving lives! The future is surely to bring more new thrills as the progress is non-stoppable. New tasks emerge, demands grow – and IT technologies are (almost habitually already) here to help us.
