IT Service Management goes Automotive

Eberhard Hübner The first time I got in touch with the topic was when I started working in a large company with the IT environment provided there. With the advent of the smartphone era, it became a daily experience for my private life as well. I became most intensively involved with it during the eight years of my professional life when I was responsible for the quality management of cloud-based services for the internet of things and service-based mobility solutions. In my view, IT Service Management describes the skills required to provide high-quality digital services that offer the user attractive added value.

Today's cars are connected to the internet and are gradually being transformed into high-performance computers on the move, kind of a data center with sensors and actuators on wheels. This so-called software-defined vehicle (SDV) produces and consumes vast amounts of data every day. This cosmos of new possibilities enables the industry to continuously offer customers attractive digital services. This, in turn, offers new revenue streams for manufacturers and suppliers, even after sales and over the lifetime of the vehicle. Autonomous driving as the next great evolution of mobility is unthinkable without data-based, digital services. All manufacturers are also required by EU-regulation to operate a software update management system and a cybersecurity management system to regularly identify security vulnerabilities and close them remotely. All of this requires a complex interplay of IT services. Accordingly, IT service management ensures that this happens correctly, smoothly and with high performance. This is the only way to ensure customer satisfaction.

The fact that you must look at both sides. The product architecture and the process view. At the same time, we have the different regions and markets. To give you an example: The AutoShow Shanghai 2023 has just shown us again who is driving the competition globally, especially for electric vehicles and in general for the seamless integration of the mobile world into the vehicle. European OEMs are increasingly at the back of the race, especially compared to China, but also in parts compared to US. In addition to strategic investments made globally, the industry also needs to evolve in product development. In E/E development, for example, the deterministic "white box" approach needs to be expanded to include a "black box" approach. This will add a service-oriented architecture (SoA) for the complex interaction of digital systems across many service providers to the previous leading paradigm for safety-relevant embedded control systems. This is a fundamental difference to the previous ECU-based approach. In addition to making E/E systems as stable as possible with minimal changes, the industry must now continuously deliver value to customers through digital services. IT service management capabilities and skills must be built across the board throughout the industry. This is the only way to successfully leverage the expected business potential.

IT service management is central to the digital transformation of the industry. Through digital services, traditional E/E development is moving closer to the end customers and must now deal intensively with the quality perceived by end customers in addition to the measurable quality. This requires additional, new knowledge about suitable technologies, processes, methods, and tools, such as open-source software, CI/CD, cloud-based microservices, data management, and machine learning, to name just a few. The previously primary focus on individual service suppliers is expanding to the service owner's overall responsibility for complex service-based solutions with multiple service suppliers. Services are therefore provided in a network of service owners and their service providers. In fact, the service owner has a new role to play here. This is because safeguarding overall quality and minimizing risks requires not only evaluating and improving the processes and procedures of the commissioned service suppliers but also safeguarding service quality across the entire network of services. IT service management enables the service owners, who are responsible to the end customer, to ensure precisely this.