As the preferred OTA provider for more than 40 global vehicle manufacturers on over 60 million vehicles, HARMAN offers proven OTA solutions and unparalleled expertise to support both passenger and non-passenger automotive OEMs across their respective vehicle lifecycles.
The announcement of this major release is a great opportunity to thank the selected car manufacturers that have been involved in the scoping process of this major release. Having them as part of the value creation process has been a true game changer for the product team.
At HARMAN we feel it is important to point out that several factors have been influencing the vehicle E/E architecture over time. These factors include:
A shift from distributed to more centralized architectures
A growing importance of software-driven and service-oriented (SOA) architectures
A trend for ECU consolidation which led to the introduction of onboard high-end compute units, like Zonal & Central Computing Units (also known as Vehicle Servers), Zonal Gateways, Digital Cockpits and other Domain Controllers
A need to manage and update the software/configuration of a growing number of remote ECUs
Fast-growing software image size of the various software components on-board, especially the high-end compute units
Growing cybersecurity concerns that needed to be mitigated
“In the last few months, we have been tirelessly working to enhance our OTA solution. Our new release will greatly enhance our state-of-the-art OTA service for our existing and future customers."
Michal Geva, Vice President & GM, OTA and Cybersecurity at HARMAN
To accommodate these architectural evolutions, this release of the HARMAN OTA solution now enables to update the high-end compute units, alongside legacy/low-resource ECUs, in an efficient and secured manner.
As part of Release 12.0, the onboard OTA orchestration capability can be distributed across the in-vehicle network. For traditional E/E architectures, the entire HARMAN OTA onboard update flow is managed centrally to enable the update of multiple ECUs. In this new major release, the update flow can be distributed, hence it will better serve high-end compute units, and have the capability to handle larger software images (avoiding bottlenecks and performance issues).
While better addressing the new E/E architecture on the onboard side, the OTA 12.0 solution introduces a more flexible and scalable offboard implementation. -It provides improved performance and support ability, along with some important user interface enhancements.
This release also introduces several onboard and offboard cybersecurity enhancements, together with many functional improvements designed to require less intervention from the OTA service operations team, while offering a more secure flow.
Contact us to schedule your system upgrade or to discuss the transition to HARMAN's proven OTA service for your automotive fleet. Or, to learn more about HARMAN OTA, simply click here.
Oded Mann
Co-Head of Product Management & Strategy at HARMAN International
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