Chinese Car Company Puts IT Systems in the Cloud to Create the Ultimate Connected Car

OverviewCustomer: QorosCustomer Website: www.qorosauto.comCustomer Size: 2,500 employeesCountry or Region: ChinaIndustry: Manufacturing—Automotive

Customer ProfileQoros Automotive, based in Shanghai, is a Chinese car company that designs and manufactures high-quality, technology-smart cars. It launched its first model, the Qoros 3 Sedan, in 2013.

Business SituationQoros wanted to create a connected car to support the modern driver’s desire to be always connected to his digital life. The Qoros IT infrastructure needed to support pervasive connectivity beyond the car.

SolutionQoros went to the cloud, running its enhanced vehicle telematics systems in Microsoft Azure.

Benefits Create the ultimate connected car Focus on innovation rather than IT

infrastructure Expand globally in months versus years Create datacenter in hours versus

months Avoid multimillion-dollar datacenter

expense

“Car connectivity is the new battleground for product differentiation, and with Microsoft Azure, we can stay ahead of the competition.”

Maurits Aalberse, Director of Connected Services, Qoros Automotive

What if you could design a car from a clean sheet of paper—no history, no restrictions? This was the opportunity facing Qoros Automotive, a new international car manufacturer from China, which chose to run its cars’ vehicle telematics system in Microsoft Azure. By using Azure, Qoros gained tremendous freedom to create a rich “connected car” experience for modern drivers. Qoros also avoided an 18-month-long effort and multimillion-dollar expense of building a datacenter and can expand much faster on a global scale.

SituationWhen Qoros Automotive was launched in 2007 as a new Chinese car manufacturer, the founders knew that they did not want to create just another car, but a better car. Thinking of the modern metropolitan driver who is always connected to the digital world, Qoros set out to design the ultimate ”connected car”—one that was connected to the Internet and enabled driving services to be accessed from smartphone, tablet and PC.

Qoros launched its first car in late 2013, targeting the Chinese market first and later the Slovakian market. Qoros cars are differentiated not only by their connected services but by their stylish design, rigorous safety features and adherence to international quality standards. The company is headquartered in Shanghai, where it also has a design office, with another design center in Munich, Germany, together with manufacturing facilities in Changshu, China. Qoros currently employs 2,500 people, 1,500 of which are factory workers.

When Qoros began to design the digital heart and soul of its car—the vehicle telematics system, which would manage all the data generated by and delivered to the car—it had to decide whether to build a large datacenter in China or look to the cloud.

A datacenter would cost tens of millions of dollars and take 12 to 18 months to set up—far too long for the new company to spare. “Setting up our datacenter would significantly slow our time-to-market,” says Eric Pang, Senior Manager of Connected Services for Qoros. “Additionally, we would have to duplicate this expense and time investment to set up a datacenter in Europe when we expanded there.”

But more than the cost, Qoros wanted a technology platform that would give it the ultimate flexibility in delivering connected car services—constant innovation of digital

services delivered not only to the car but to any digital device the driver owned.

SolutionQoros decided to deploy its vehicle telematics system in the cloud—specifically Microsoft Azure, a public cloud environment that provides virtual compute, networking, storage, and other resources for developing and hosting applications in Microsoft datacenters. Qoros knew that Azure would be key in delivering an always-connected services platform and also liked the idea of an elastic cloud infrastructure that could grow with its business—eliminating the need to build datacenters as it expanded across Europe.

In addition to Azure, Qoros looked at Amazon and local cloud providers; however, only Azure offered presence in both China and Europe. Azure also provided the breadth of cloud services that Qoros needed to develop and run its vehicle telematics system and also run a variety of core business systems in the cloud. “Microsoft was a one-stop shop where we could find everything that we needed,” Pang says.

Cloud Development ExpertsQoros engaged Microsoft Services to design and build the Qoros telematics system, which it calls the QorosQloud. Microsoft Services Enterprise Strategy helped Qoros plan and design the system, and Microsoft Services Consulting built the system and linked it to third-party content providers and telecommunications companies.

“Microsoft had deep experience in the automotive industry—not only in designing and running telematics systems, but also in designing infotainment systems for companies like Ford,” says Maurits Aalberse, Director of Connected Services for Qoros. “Microsoft also had relationships with Toyota, China Telecom, and other respected Asian companies.”

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“Microsoft had deep experience in the automotive industry—not only in designing and running telematics systems but also in designing infotainment systems for companies like Ford.”

Maurits Aalberse, Director of Connected Services, Qoros Automotive

The Qoros team developed the functional requirements, worked closely with Microsoft Services throughout the engagement, and coordinated with the many vendors that would provide data to QorosQloud—traffic data, points of interest, restaurant reviews, parking data and so forth.

QorosQloud connects to the Qoros dealer management system, customer relationship management, company websites, mobile apps, and other business systems that run both in Azure and on-premises in a small Qoros datacenter.

Advanced Features Enabled by the CloudQorosQloud offers drivers a range of easy-to-use entertainment, navigation, communication, and vehicle monitoring functions by seamlessly connecting with Azure. In fact, QorosQloud provides more than 30 services, which can be also accessed from the driver’s smartphone, tablet, or PC, delivering functionality that goes beyond driving and the car.

The user interface to the QorosQloud is called the Qoros Multimedia Hub, an eight-inch touchscreen on the dashboard. Drivers swipe the screen, as on a smartphone, to access features and take calls with minimal distraction.

With QorosQloud, this simple interface gives owners access to a broad suite of cloud-enhanced services including navigation and traffic information, social networking, the ability to monitor the car’s condition and maintenance requirements, and even book a service date with a local dealer.

Of huge significance is the car owner’s ability to access all these services from their smartphone, tablet or other connected device, so that they are always connected to their car even when not in it. For example, a driver can plan her trip at home and sync her personal device and plans to the car navigation system.

If a driver is in trouble, the QorosQloud relays car location and problem diagnosis to the nearest dealer, which can access data about the car’s condition and maintenance history. This service runs on Azure Cloud Services, with Azure Storage holding car and third-party map and care repair facility data, and Azure Service Bus managing the information pushing services message queues.

Yet another service, called smart points of interest, lets Qoros owners tell their car which points of interest they want to see on their in-car monitor. Whereas other in-car systems flood drivers with hundreds of restaurant choices when a driver asks for nearby eateries, Qoros owners can specify, for example, that they only want to see Italian restaurants with at least a three-star rating. When owners can enter their ‘smart points’ preferences, Azure Cloud Services handle the data requests and run the Qoros website. Azure SQL Database stores the user request and all car information, and Azure Service Bus manages the message queues for the information pushing service.

Qoros also uses Azure Storage to store car data history, Azure Cloud Service to host QorosQloud and Azure Virtual Network to connect QorosQloud to on-premises systems.

BenefitsBy building and running its vehicle telematics system in Microsoft Azure, Qoros gained a platform for continuous innovation and can focus its IT staff on innovation rather than maintaining IT infrastructure. Qoros can also expand much faster by using global Azure datacenters and avoid the multimillion-dollar expense of building datacenters around the world.

Create the Ultimate Connected Car By putting its vehicle telematics system in the cloud rather than in the car, Qoros has a much better ability to continuously innovate. Many other car companies send vehicle telematics data to the vehicle for

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“Because we are putting the processing power in the cloud, our driver services are not restricted by the technology in the car. … This gives us a far greater ability to innovate continuously.”

Eric Pang, Senior Manager of Connected Services, Qoros Automotive

integration and processing. But because it takes approximately five years to design a car, in-car computer systems are often out-of-date as soon as a car is driven out of the dealership.

“Because we are putting the processing power in the cloud, our driver services are not restricted by the technology in the car,” Pang says. “We can continually add new services and data sources, and present them to drivers who are driving older cars. This gives us a far greater ability to innovate continuously.”

The modular and scalable nature of Azure makes it the perfect platform for delivering communications, entertainment and location-based services anywhere in the world. Because it uses a layered software architecture and standardized interfaces that maximize code reuse, Qoros can keep QorosQloud updated and compatible with the latest consumer devices and in-vehicle services. In addition, powerful development tools provide flexibility with a wide variety of supported third-party components so that Qoros can work with a number of international partners, including major content providers and social media networks.

“Car connectivity is the new battleground for product differentiation, and with Microsoft Azure, we can stay ahead of the competition,” Aalberse says. “Ninety-one percent of our customers are recommending our cars to friends and family, and customer advocacy is the greatest compliment of all.”

Focus on Innovation Rather than IT InfrastructureBy leaving server provisioning and management to Microsoft, Qoros is able to focus on designing and selling great cars. “We have a small team to manage our on-premises infrastructure, but we don’t want a lot of IT people,” Pang says. “Instead of needing 20 people to manage a large on-premises infrastructure, I can get by with six

people to manage QorosQloud. I can then hire more people to create new driver services for QorosQloud 2.0, which is core to what differentiates us.”

Expand Globally in Months Versus YearsAs Qoros expands beyond China, it can duplicate QorosQloud and other applications to Azure datacenters in Europe and beyond. “We want to be in multiple markets, and with Azure we have a platform that makes it very easy to expand,” Aalberse says. “When we enter those markets, we won’t have to build an infrastructure all over again, which will save time and money. Azure already has a strong presence globally, which makes Microsoft the ideal partner as we expand into Europe.”

Content and service providers (providers of traffic information, for example) and telecom providers will be different in each market, and it will take time to establish those links to QorosQloud. “Setting up the necessary infrastructure, however, will take a matter of hours, and getting the whole thing up and running in a new location will take just three to six months,” Pang says. “This contrasts with years in a traditional datacenter environment. Azure gives us a significant time-to-market advantage wherever we do business.”

Create Datacenter in Hours versus Months and Avoid Multimillion-Dollar ExpenseMicrosoft Services completed the development work of the Qoros telematics system in just one year. “Such complex systems typically take two to three years to develop,” says Howard Yin, Chief Technology Officer, Greater China Region, Microsoft. “We fully attribute the speedup to developing the application in Azure. The Azure platform provided ready-to-use services such as Azure Service Bus and Queue storage, which saved a significant amount of development effort and time. Also, the Azure software development kit integrates very well with Microsoft Visual

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Studio, which made the development very efficient, and the flexibility of cloud resources saved the time and effort of creating a development environment.”

With the accelerated development supported by Azure, Qoros was able to get its entire datacenter infrastructure in place in hours versus the 12 to 18 months that it would have taken to build a datacenter from the ground up. “We were able to develop our core business application two or three times faster and establish datacenter infrastructure almost instantaneously by using Azure,” Pang says. “We also avoided massive capital startup costs in the millions of dollars, and avoided another hundreds of thousands of dollars to expand this infrastructure as the company grows.”

Pang also appreciated and enjoyed the experience of being an early customer of Azure in China. “We’re a new company, and Azure was just starting up in China, so we were kindred spirits,” Pang says. “The local Microsoft employees were very enthusiastic to work with us to build something new. There was a great team spirit, which was really refreshing. We were all excited to break new ground.”

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Enable Modern Business ApplicationsEnable modern business applications that meet the most demanding requirements. Microsoft development tools help you design, test, and deploy applications quickly, as well as connect applications, data, and services to any device. Your applications can run in your datacenter, a hosted site, or a public cloud, or they can span multiple locations.

For more information about enabling modern business applications, go to:www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/cloud-os/modern-business-apps.aspx

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This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published August 2014

Software and Services Microsoft Azure− Microsoft Azure Cloud Services− Microsoft Azure Service Bus− Microsoft Azure SQL Database− Microsoft Azure Storage− Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines− Microsoft Azure Virtual Network

Services− Microsoft Services Consulting− Microsoft Services Enterprise Strategy

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For more information about Qoros products and services, visit the website at: www.qorosauto.com