Driving Innovation – Empowering Service Centers for Software Dependent Vehicles with ZEDEDA

The presentation by Manny Calero from ZEDEDA at Edge Field Day 3 focused on how ZEDEDA is helping one of the world’s largest auto manufacturers modernize its dealership infrastructure to address the growing complexity of software-dependent vehicles. With the rise of electric vehicles (EVs) and increasingly stringent security regulations, such as UNECE R155, the need for secure and efficient software delivery has become paramount. The auto manufacturer, which produces around 8 million vehicles annually and services tens of millions more, faced challenges in delivering large, secure software updates to its 70,000 dealerships and service centers. ZEDEDA’s edge platform enables the manufacturer to securely manage and deliver these updates at scale, ensuring compliance with regulations and addressing bandwidth limitations.

ZEDEDA’s solution revolves around managing workloads at the edge, allowing dealerships to process software updates locally rather than transferring massive amounts of data from a central location. This approach not only reduces bandwidth usage but also ensures that each vehicle receives its unique software image securely. The platform is designed to handle large-scale deployments, managing tens of thousands of endpoints as a fleet, with a focus on security and flexibility. ZEDEDA’s platform is hardware-agnostic, supporting both x86 and ARM-based processors, which allows the manufacturer to avoid vendor lock-in and diversify its hardware supply chain, a lesson learned from the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition to software updates, ZEDEDA’s platform is being used to consolidate other dealership applications, such as inventory management, onto a single edge platform. The platform’s flexibility allows it to support both legacy applications and modern cloud-native designs, such as Kubernetes. While the current focus is on dealership infrastructure, ZEDEDA is also working on other projects with the manufacturer, including in-car solutions and manufacturing use cases. The platform’s ability to manage edge devices at scale, with centralized cloud-based management, makes it a powerful tool for modernizing the infrastructure of industries like automotive, where secure and efficient software delivery is critical.