Amazon Web Services and BlackBerry have agreed to develop and market jointly BlackBerry’s Intelligent Vehicle Data Platform, IVY. The move will boost development of IVY and provide a global platform to bring it to market.

BlackBerry describes its IVY cloud platform as designed to ‘allow automakers to provide a consistent and secure way to read vehicle sensor data, normalise it, and create actionable insights from that data both locally in the vehicle and in the cloud’.

BlackBerry IVY is designed to solve problems with data access, collection, and management in the automotive industry. Modern cars and trucks are built with thousands of parts from many different suppliers, with each vehicle model made up of differing hardware and software. Automotive data is therefore produced in different formats. This creates obstacles to developing data access across all the different vehicle subsystems. BlackBerry IVY is designed to simplify the process by applying machine learning, allowing for predictive insights and inferences, and action based on those insights.

BlackBerry IVY will support multiple vehicle operating systems and multi-cloud deployments in order to ensure compatibility across vehicle models and brands. It will build upon BlackBerry QNX’s capabilities for surfacing and normalising data from automobiles and AWS’s portfolio of services, including capabilities for IoT and machine learning.

It will will run inside a vehicle’s embedded systems, but will be managed and configured remotely from the cloud. As a result, BlackBerry IVY will provide car makers with greater visibility into vehicle data, control over who can access it, and edge computing capabilities to optimise how quickly and efficiently the data is processed. With BlackBerry IVY’s integrated capabilities, car makers will be able to deliver new features, functionality, and performance to customers over the lifetime of their cloud-connected vehicles, as well as unlock new revenue streams and business models built on vehicle data.

Examples of how it could be used include recognising driver behaviour and hazardous conditions such as icy roads or heavy traffic and then recommending that a driver enable relevant vehicle safety features such as traction control, lane-keeping assist, or adaptive cruise control. IVY could then provide car makers with feedback on how and when those safety features are used, allowing them to make targeted investments to improve vehicle performance. Drivers of electric vehicles could choose to share their car’s battery information with third-party charging networks to proactively reserve a charging connector and tailor charging time according to the driver’s current location and travel plans. BlackBerry IVY could also provide insights to parents of teenage drivers who may choose to receive customised notifications based on insights from vehicle sensors when the number of passengers in the vehicle changes, when the driver appears to be texting, distracted, or not observing speed limits, or when the vehicle occupancy level rises above the parents’ desired safety threshold. Similarly, parents of infants could receive a reminder to engage the child safety lock when the vehicle detects a child in the rear seat.

BlackBerry says that the IVY platform will allow car makers to compress the time-line to build, deploy, and monetise new in-vehicle applications and connected services across multiple vehicle brands and models. Instead of investing in one-off solutions that conform to the engineering of different vehicle models (as they do today), car makers using BlackBerry IVY will be able to leverage different types of data as common building blocks for new services that could work across a range of models. Car makers will be able to use the platform’s application programming interfaces (APIs) to share data and outputs with their software development teams, giving them the ability to innovate, while also protecting customer privacy and security by controlling whom can access vehicle and app data and at what level of detail.

The company claims IVY will make it easier for car makers to collaborate with a wider pool of developers to accelerate creation of new offerings that deliver improved vehicle performance, reduced costs for maintenance and repairs, and added convenience. For instance, by analysing real-time performance data, car makers could recognise the first signs of potentially faulty parts, deploy code to identify affected vehicles, notify impacted drivers, and perform targeted recalls. Car makers will be able to remotely deploy and update the software from the platform’s Cloud Console (a web interface for managing BlackBerry IVY) to continuously improve the functionality of the system.

“Data and connectivity are opening new avenues for innovation in the automotive industry, and BlackBerry and AWS share a common vision to provide automakers and developers with better insights so that they can deliver new services to consumers,” said John Chen, Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry. “This software platform promises to bring an era of invention to the in-vehicle experience and help create new applications, services, and opportunities without compromising safety, security, or customer privacy. We are pleased to expand our relationship with AWS to execute this vision and deliver BlackBerry IVY.”

“AWS and BlackBerry are making it possible for any automaker to continuously reinvent the customer experience and transform vehicles from fixed pieces of technology into systems that can grow and adapt with a user’s needs and preferences,” said Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services, Inc. “Through this joint effort with BlackBerry, we will provide automakers with the insights, capabilities, agility, and speed they need to thrive in an increasingly connected world. As automakers seek to race ahead in their digital transformations, BlackBerry IVY empowers them to build their brands and set the standard for connected vehicle services across the automotive industry.”