MG Motor India has announced a raft of features with the launch of the new compact SUV, the Astor, and one of the key aspects of the announcement has been the partnerships MG has closed with tech giants like Microsoft and L&T. Particularly with Microsoft, MG Motors has closed a deal for its Azure cloud computing service which has many local data centres in India – in cities like Mumbai and Noida. This means, MG’s cloud-connected features will not be pushing the data to its servers in China but will be localised.
“With data playing such a critical part in enhancing the in-car experience, we are doing our best to ensure that it is safe and protected. All the data from the car systems that we are using to power these personalized services are securely stored on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform in India,” said MG Motor India MD, Rajeev Chaba.
“MG Motors India is using our cloud computing service to store the data they collect from their customers within India itself. All customer driving data is stored on cloud servers which come with high levels of security so that you can rest easy,” said John Stenlake, Director, Automotive, Mobility and Transportation Industry, Microsoft, highlighting the security benefits.
Apart from the obvious security benefits, this also is a performance boost for the cloud-connected features as they will be more responsive thanks to the geographic proximity of the servers as they are now in India which reduces latency.
Microsoft Azure has the most localised cloud regions of any cloud computing service in the world. It has even more local regions than market leader and category inventor Amazon Web Services (AWS). Microsoft Azure trails AWS in overall global cloud compute market share but has been gaining market share over the last decade under the leadership of CEO Satya Nadella.
Nadella was the man entrusted to start Azure in 2008 and its success propelled him to the top spot of the American giant when he replaced long time CEO Steve Ballmer in 2014. Nadella has made many partnerships in India with regards to Azure, including Flipkart.
MG Motor India has also partnered with L&T Technology Services for the security and privacy of the data that’s parsed through the vehicles. Chaba highlights that the best data privacy practices are being leveraged thanks to this partnership as the Astor generates troves of data.
“In the connected world we live in, cybersecurity, privacy and data usage are questions that occur to each one of us. This also applies to connected cars. We at L&T Technology Services are happy and excited to collaborate with MG India to provide security auditing services for your vehicles. We also ensure that any communication that happens from and in-between, the vehicle, the network and the mobile app is secure,” said Nitin Jain, global head of digital products and services L&T Technology Services.
Jain also highlighted that L&T technology services also ensure that MG Motor India complies with the latest security standards. The Astor gets level 2 autonomous driving capability and also gets a new virtual assistant which also leverages AI, apart from an assortment of unique services.