Google Cloud and SAP collaborate to transform the automotive industry

Following SAP and Google Cloud’s announcement of an expanded partnership earlier this year and last week at Google Next, the two companies are now joining forces to deliver powerful solutions for the automotive industry. SAP and Google Cloud are embarking on a new collaboration that will leverage the SAP Integration Suite, SAP Datasphere, and Google Cloud’s capabilities with a special focus on promoting interoperability and secure data exchange across data platforms.

The automotive industry is undergoing significant transformation, driven by technological advancements, and changing customer expectations. To stay competitive in this rapidly evolving landscape, automotive companies are increasingly turning to cloud-based solutions to streamline operations, enhance customer experiences, and drive innovation.

SAP and Google Cloud’s deepened partnership aims at promoting interoperability and secure data exchange across data platforms. The new collaboration aims to bring several benefits to the automotive industry, including:

• Streamlined operations: Connecting and integrating data from various sources, breaking down data silos and enabling seamless data exchange.
• Enhanced customer experiences: Leveraging real-time data to personalize customer experiences, improve customer satisfaction, and drive brand loyalty.
• Elevated collaboration and innovation: Providing a unified view of the automotive ecosystem, this partnership will help to enable direct and transparent collaboration between manufacturers, suppliers, and other stakeholders.
• Industry-wide standardization: Contributing to the development of industry-wide standards and frameworks through participation in Catena-X, the first collaborative and open data ecosystem for the automotive industry, enabling interoperability and collaboration across the automotive value chain.

As data plays a pivotal role in the automotive value chain, ensuring seamless connectivity and secure data exchange across different stakeholders becomes paramount. Recognizing this need, SAP and Google Cloud just announced last week at Google Cloud Next the companies are championing interoperability within Catena-X, a key initiative that fosters standardized and cross-industry collaboration.

Catena-X, is the first collaborative, open data ecosystem for the automotive industry, where companies can efficiently exchange data along the entire value chain focusing on use cases such as traceability, quality management or sustainability. Catena-X aims to establish a standardized and secure data exchange platform for the automotive industry, enabling seamless collaboration between manufacturers, suppliers, and other stakeholders. The ecosystem facilitates real-time access to relevant information, leading to optimized production processes, reduced lead times, and an overall increase in productivity across the value chain.

One of the key areas of collaboration between SAP for Automotive and Google Cloud is the Catena-X initiative:

• By leveraging the SAP Integration Suite and Google Cloud’s AI & machine learning products, data processing and smart analytics capabilities, and secure-by-design infrastructure and platform services, Catena-X can provide a strong foundation for automotive companies to generate insights and to share data seamlessly, securely, and efficiently. The use of these technologies further allows to streamline and govern complex supply chain processes, which are at the very core of the whole automotive industry.
• As the Eclipse Dataspace Components (EDC) is the designated data exchange framework within Catena-X, Google Cloud and SAP will jointly evaluate which additional cloud services could deliver high value to the broader ecosystem, and will work on making those services available to the EDC. This will open new and interesting opportunities to the Catena-X network.
• One of the main topics for Catena-X is sustainability. SAP and Google Cloud are exploring ways to combine SAP Datasphere with broader ESG data sets and insights powered by Google Cloud to accelerate sustainability journeys with actionable insights.
• Another Catena-X use case where data exchange is crucial is quality management. The use case enables automotive players to identify and solve quality problems faster by providing targeted and precise error detection and root cause analysis in companies and networks across the automotive industry. By integrating SAP Datasphere with Google Cloud BigQuery quality data can be enriched, and with Google Cloud Timeseries Insights API anomalies can be detected earlier.

This partnership exemplifies SAP and Google Cloud’s commitment to industry-wide progress and highlights the immense potential of data-driven collaboration in revolutionizing the Automotive sector.

Together, SAP and Google Cloud’s Automotive offering will enable customers to:

• Build a 720° foundation for personalized engagements: In order to enhance customer experience for future Business Models (direct sales, subscriptions, additional services), SAP Automotive and Google Cloud are planning to enable our joint customers to combine their data on customer preferences and behavior with transactional and vehicle usage data for a 720° view (360° customer + 360° vehicle data). Powered by Google Cloud BigQuery as well as SAP Customer Data Platform and SAP Digital Vehicle Hub, Google Cloud’s and SAP’s joint customer base will be enabled to make real-time decisions and take relevant actions to increase revenue and decrease costs.
• Reinvent the digital purchase experience: The planned integration of SAP’s Customer Experience portfolio with Google Cloud’s solutions for immersive experiences (e.g., Immersive Stream for XR) and conversational AI (e.g., Vertex AI Search and Conversation) will enable carmakers to reinvent the purchase experience.

Matthias Breunig, Director, Global Automotive Solutions at Google Cloud, states, “In this era of digital transformation, it is crucial for companies to work together and embrace interoperability for the betterment of the entire automotive value chain. Our partnership with SAP Automotive demonstrates our dedication to unlock the potential of secure data exchange, ultimately driving innovation and enabling our customers to deliver superior products and services to consumers.”

Hagen Heubach, SAP Vice President Head of Industry Business Unit Automotive, remarks, “By collaborating with Google Cloud, we are taking a significant step towards a more connected and efficient Automotive industry. Secure data exchange and interoperability form the foundation of a successful digital ecosystem, and we are excited to contribute our expertise to this initiative.”