Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the BMW Group have announced a comprehensive strategic partnership aimed at accelerating the BMW Group’s innovation efforts by prioritizing data and analytics in their decision-making processes. Together, the two companies will leverage their strengths to collaboratively develop cloud-based IT and software solutions that enhance efficiency, performance, and sustainability across all aspects of the company’s operations, spanning vehicle development to after-sales services.
This strategic move seeks to expedite the BMW Group’s innovation by placing data and analytics at the heart of their decision-making processes.
As part of this extensive collaboration, the BMW Group will undertake the migration of data from its various business units and operations spanning over a hundred countries to AWS. This migration encompasses several critical IT systems and databases related to sales, manufacturing, and maintenance. This endeavor aims to boost agility, extract valuable insights through data analysis, and facilitate quicker innovation in creating new customer experiences. Additionally, the collaboration will include investments in the training and enablement of up to 5,000 software engineers in the latest AWS technologies, empowering the global BMW Group workforce to leverage data more effectively.
Alexander Buresch, CIO and Senior Vice President of BMW Group IT, stated, “We are shifting our focus towards making data a central element of our work, and we are excited about our collaboration with AWS to merge our expertise. This partnership will continue to set higher standards for innovation in the automotive industry and deliver exciting new experiences to our customers worldwide.”
A pivotal aspect of this partnership is the advancement of the BMW Group’s Cloud Data Hub, a central platform for managing company-wide data and cloud-based data solutions. The Cloud Data Hub serves as a central starting point for BMW Group employees in all corporate divisions to implement analytical and data-driven applications. Through the Cloud Data Hub, employees are already utilizing various AWS services to process, analyze, and enrich data related to development, production, sales, and vehicle performance, amounting to several petabytes of data. Machine learning applications are used to gain valuable insights. For example, this technology will enable the BMW Group to enhance its forecasting of global demand for vehicle models and equipment options, optimizing planning in purchasing, production, and sales, ultimately leading to increased customer satisfaction.