How do we make sure that we don’t just talk about autonomous cars without talking about connected parking, ride-sharing, and predictive maintenance. For example, if we just talk about and promote the use of autonomous cars, we are at risk of creating more issues on our roads today, than ever before. Think about it, if, for example 100 autonomous cars are added to the already overloaded road system today, with only one passenger, going to one location, that doesn’t bring any benefit – it just added a 100 more vehicle to the roads.

We need to look at how we ensure that anyone who wants to utilize an autonomous car can. How can he or she ensure that the car is available when they want it – that it can go to multiple destinations, pick up other passengers, and how also to use the same vehicles, not only take people from one location to another, but also for transportation of goods.

How do we fuel an autonomous vehicle? Where does an autonomous vehicle park when not in use? How do we maintain and fix vehicles even before they break down? And how about paying for the services — the fuel, the oil change, and the parking? For this user experience to be realized, huge amounts of IoT sensor data needs to be collected from various vehicles and infrastructure assets. The IoT sensor data streams needs to be analyzed and presented in “real time” with “live” data and integrated into the Digital Core of many businesses across multiple industries. Moving from ‘Insight to Action…’

There are only a handful of companies that are: (a) an agent for Digital Transformation (b) trusted across industries and geographies (c) have the technology, people and ability to deliver. SAP is definitely one of them. SAP is the world’s largest provider of enterpise application software, with approximately 310,000 customers in 190 countries and let’s not forget that 76% of all worldwide business transactions touch an SAP system. This puts SAP in a unique position to be able to bring together different industries, from consumer to retail, from manufacturing to transportation. And SAP has SAP HANA, an in-memory data platform that can crunch those huge amounts of data rapidly, perform real-time analytics, and deploy real-time applications. SAP is not in the business of building autonomous cars, operating IoT sensor networks, or offering payment settlement services. SAP is in the business of integrating all of these technologies to deliver a unique and delightful consumer digital experience.

Learn more on the IoT section of sap.com.

This story originally appeared on SAP Business Trends.

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