CES 2017: Microsoft announces Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform powered by Azure

Consumer Electronics Show 2017 is underway, and companies from all over technology and consumer electronics industry are showcasing the latest and greatest. Microsoft, the technology giant, has announced its Connected Vehicle Platform as a part to move towards the connected platform for cars in future. The platform, known as ‘Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform’ is powered by Microsoft Azure while giving a set of services to empower auto manufacturers.

The platform allows auto manufacturers to easily create custom connected driving experiences while addressing predictive maintenance, improving in-car productivity, advanced navigation, customer insights and helping build autonomous driving capabilities. Renault-Nissan Alliance announced that its next-generation of connected cars would be powered by Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform to enable predictive maintenance, remote monitoring, advanced navigation and more.

Microsoft has partnered to develop a scalable platform for BMW Connected which will be based on Azure technologies. This platform will provide in-car productivity services powered by Microsoft Cortana that BMW presented during ongoing CES 2017. This comes right after the announcement by Volvo Cars last week to introduce Skype for Business in its new 90 Series cars. The company will demo Skype for Business in its new XC90 at Ericsson booth.

The approach taken by Microsoft is similar to the one taken by Tesla where the software is deeply integrated into the vehicle instead of just in-car productivity and entertainment as provided by Amazon Alexa.