IT Plays an Integral Role in Volkswagen
HITESH NUONI, Head of IT and Processes, Volkswagen
How are you leveraging IT at Volkswagen?
Well, Volkswagen is known for its stringent quality standards and IT plays an integral role in delivering and maintaining these standards. Volkswagen IT has built systems which spans across the complete lifecycle of the car manufacturing and after sales process. These systems help deliver consistent quality, high standards, and customer satisfaction.
What are some of the recent projects that you have deployed successfully at Volkswagen?
Volkswagen IT has invested and implemented solutions from a business continuity perspective. With technologies like virtualization, Volkswagen has built highly resilient infrastructure to support the various production and sales applications. The two on-premise datacenters run in an active-active configuration thus ensuring near zero downtime.
How do you see the future of mobile technology in the automobile industry? Are you making use of mobile commerce and how is it helping the company?
Mobile technologies are getting increasingly integrated with the car and the car manufacturing process. Volkswagen has been using handheld devices for quality checks on the shop floor for a long time now. After sales mobile applications are helping to deliver a unique customer-oriented experience which is evolving at a fast pace.
Do you feel that technologies used in cars will be a game-changer in the industry in the times to come?
What people often don’t realize is that a modern car already has a lot of technology (ABS, EBD, ESP, ESC, etc) which has helped in making cars extremely safe and efficient over the years. We also have a lot of driver assistance technologies which have taken the automobile world to the next level. With technologies like the self-driving car, we already know that the future of automobiles is set to change. As the demand for alternate fuels, passenger safety and efficiency increases, technology is set to play a pivotal role. The automobile industry is on the brink of re-defining the car as we know it.
As a CIO, what are the things which excite you today in IT?
IoT or IoE: Internet of Things or Internet of Everything. This refers majorly to wireless network and the concept will allow or enable new forms of communication between people and things and between things themselves. The term “Internet of Things” has come to describe a number of technologies and research disciplines that enable the Internet to reach out into the real world of physical objects. It will be as simple as person enabling a device remotely to function its required duty.
On the changing roles of CIOs?
In the earlier times CIO’s role was more related or concerned with IT technologies but now IT systems and technologies contribute a lot to business domains. CIO’s have to be equipped with functional domain knowledge so that an appropriate aligning of technology can be done to the business needs and demands.