connected cars are major element of the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution globally. According to Gratner, the Global connected car production to grow almost 10-fold in five years - from 12.4 million in 2016to 61 million in 2020.
As Connected Cars are reality now, we see the adoption of this technology in India as well. Seagate, being one of the leaders in the storage industry, has always been at the forefront in creating optimized and innovative data storage solutions catering to different verticals.Sandy Sun, Vice President & General Manager for Asia-Pacific and China sales, Seagate Technology shares her opinion on future of Connected Cars and her plans for Indian market.
DT: - The concept of connected cars has been gaining relevance globally, how do you think it is growing and how is India expected to adopt to this?
A: - Like the global auto industry, the Indian industry too is looking at embedding technological advancements supporting today’s customer to fully embrace the digital lifestyle. Big Data, Cloud, Internet of Things and Mobility, will be the key mainstays to fuel the growth of the connected car concept in India. With India embracing the digital lifestyle, we expect to see a lot more connected cars on roads in India.
Connected vehicles will continue to generate new product and service innovations, create new companies, enable new value propositions and business models, and introduce the new era of smart mobility, in which the focus of the automotive industry shifts from individual car ownership to a more service-centric view of personal mobility.
DT: - In a network challenged country like India how do you think smart cars and connected cars would work here?
A: - Challenges occur whenever an innovation comes into play. The current government is visionary to bring India up to speed with the global trends. With the campaign like Smart Cities and Digital India, we should be optimistic that the country is preparing to be a future city at par with another country in the world.
DT: - As connected cars would generate enormous amount of data what kind of opportunities do you foresee for storage vendors?
A: - Data generation is a clear opportunity for storage vendors like Seagate. We are optimistic about the growth of connected cars market in India. Connected cars will keep generating analytics-driven insights and new revenue streams for both the automobile and storage industries.
DT: - How would storage be an imperative factor to consider for automobile players in this segment?
A: - Research conducted by Accenture Plc. estimates that connectivity in automobiles will rise to 98% by 2020 and five years after that, all new cars will be connected. Consumers are looking forward to an array of real-time services, for instance, infotainment, traffic navigation,safety and security features, thereby making internet accessibility a must have in cars. An increase in connected devices accompanies a significant increase in data creation, which opens a whole new range of opportunities for the storage market.
DT: - How does Seagate cater to this industry and what are the different storage solutions provided for this segment?
A: - Automobile segment being a proliferating industry in India presents immense opportunities. With Seagate Enterprise HDD portfolio, we offer the industry high-capacity and high-performance storage solutions purpose-built for a multitude of applications, workloads and storage tiers to maximise storage efficiency. For improving speed, density and TCO in data centres, Seagate offers one of the broadest SSDand flash portfolios on the market to meet a wide array of enterprise storage needs of the automobile sector. Built on a legacy to extend innovation from the device into the information infrastructure, onsite and in the cloud, Seagate offers the fastest and most reliable data System solutions available giving the segment a competitive advantage.
DT: - Any strategy to bring out more efficient solutions in the future?
A: - India is a key market for Seagate and we see a plethora of opportunities here. We will continue to work closely with the potential customers in India to cater to their storage requirements, and tailor cost-effective, durable and high-performance led solutions. Seagate through its various data storage solutions will satiate the storage needs of the automobile segment, triggering India’s adoption of connected cars.
