JA: 2021 was another memorable year for everyone and for all sorts of reasons. We had a bumpy recovery from the worst of the Covid pandemic, but the automotive industry was also hammered by a shortage of semiconductor parts. In your business, what stand out as the biggest challenges you faced this year?
JB: Frankly, the year has been an inflection point for software in automotive. Everybody is on now with respect to the software-defined vehicle as the new reality. Strong push for electrification, autonomous driving, plus AI propagation and data monetization all drive the need for software life cycle management including OTA as delivery method of choice, and with that the ability to access and leverage the large amounts of device data.
So much opportunity for an embedded software company like aicas that always thought that software unification across a diverse range of HW/SW platforms is the key to managing the ever increasing software complexity. Our expertise in automation of software delivery, device connectivity (e.g., in telematics), abstracting or decoupling software from underlying device footprints is what market participants, OEMs, 1st or second tiers, all are vying for. Feels as if the past 20 years were just the beginning of a scale journey. Our biggest challenge like for so many others in the industry: get the right talent.
JA: Any high spots or particular successes you’d like to share?
JB: We made a strategic choice in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic to not stop our investment into our embedded software DevOps product aicas EdgeSuite. It served us well and just two months ago we released the aicas EdgeSuite into a commercial offering with one of our hyper scale partners, in this case AWS. The AWS Wavelength offering is focused on providing 5G (4G works too) ultra-low latency data management which is useful in many automotive or smart city use cases, example collision prevention, where real-time data exchanges are critical. aicas EdgeSuite provides the gateway in the MCS to manage the software and data exchange at the most local level.
aicas EdgeSuite also is perfectly positioned to automate software and data management across automotive vehicle platforms. Customer interest is high.
JA: How are you feeling about 2022 – both in terms of business prospects and more generally?
JB: Software, software, software. Automotive OEMs, in particular, are building their software organizations and trying to find capacity to develop their software platforms. Existing tiers are adjusting away from hardware driven engineering projects to software-centric. It is a big shift in fact, and painful. The ecosystem is changing because of software. aicas is now directly engaged with OEMs, but equally we continue to work with our existing 1st tier partners.
And then there is data in everything and the value from it. Works from edge-to-cloud and assumes of course that connectivity costs do not eat up the benefit from data gathering. That is where we come in. We feel that, all said and done, our capabilities are hitting a sweet spot in the market, and that makes me feel really good about the upcoming year.
JA: Is anything emerging as a particular concern in terms of the outlook?
JB: We need to get back on track globally in running our everyday lives and with that the livelihoods of people in all places. Covid has stressed everything out, including our supply chains. In auto, the software-defined will continue to change the entire ecosystem, and least not impact those working in it as leaders or employees.
Moving from HW to SW centric is a full-scale transformation of products (software enabled), processes (agile, fast, flexible), and people (new skills, retraining). And I should add, also policy, which plays a key part in providing reliable guardrails for the large tech infrastructure investment needed or critical issues such as data privacy and cybersecurity. Big task, and it does require heavy focus, investment, and some patience to make it happen.
JA: Do you have a message for Just Auto’s readers?
JB: Software and data are at the core of the next automotive transformation. And it will be teamwork across a wide range of existing and new partners in the automotive ecosystem to get it right.
The most important thing for everyone involved in the industry – get ready and prepare now for tomorrow’s developments. The automotive solutions aicas offers reduce complexity and provide unification of systems while enabling the development, implementation and management of new generations of applications for connected mobility solutions.