Microsoft and TomTom are partnering up to bring more capability to the Azure platform.
The ability to read a sophisticated digital map is critical to the future of autonomous vehicles, experts suggest.
Sanjay Ravi, Microsoft managing director of discrete manufacturing, says building the capability into a motor vehicle will require collaboration, which requires a variety of different partners.
Thus, Microsoft has reached out to a number of different partners such as TomTom, Here and ESRI to build the capability of Azure, an open, flexible, enterprise-grade cloud computing platform. Using Azure enables automakers to build the quick, nimble systems need to power an autonomous vehicle.
“We don’t want to build our own car,” said Ravi, but Microsoft is prepared to offer carmakers a way to integrate new services capability into vehicles, which are increasingly dependent on connectivity for any number features such as entertainment and navigation.
TomTom and Microsoft announced they will collaborate to bring location-based services to the Azure platform, utilizing TomTom’s maps, plus its traffic and navigation software. TomTom plans to integrate its services into Azure to make it even easier and more flexible for developers to build and manage enterprise, mobile, web and “Internet of Things” applications that are location aware.
(Toyota launches connected car venture with Microsoft. For more, Click Here.)
“Making TomTom’s services available through the Microsoft Azure cloud platform will allow developers and our customers to make location a core part of their cloud-based applications,” said Peggy Johnson, executive vice president of Business Development at Microsoft.
“Location is fast becoming a critical component of a broad range of applications and services.” she added.
Teaming up with Microsoft will bring our technology to a much broader developer community on a platform they are already familiar with,” said Harold Goddijn, TomTom chief executive officer.
(Click Here for more about California’s DMV trying to shut down autonomous Uber effort.)
Location based services from TomTom are already used by the world’s leading companies. They rely on TomTom to provide the most up-to-date maps, real-time traffic information and traffic-avoiding navigation, Goodijn said.
TomTom defines its corporate mission as making technology easy to use so that everyone can benefit from it, he added.
“We created easy to use navigation devices, helping millions of people to get where they want to be,” Goodijn said.
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“We make easy to use navigation devices, sport watches and action cameras for consumers. We enable businesses with vehicles to more easily manage and improve fleet efficiency whilst increasing overall business performance with our Telematics solutions,” he added.