Startup Autobahn is a members-only platform initiated by Daimler AG and run by Plug-and-Play from Silicon Valley. It helps its member companies scout, track, link and collaborates with startups that are focused on the future of automotive and mobility. The platform can help traditional automakers and suppliers plug holes or catch up with innovation in the new CASE areas of Connected, Autonomous, Service-based, Electrified mobility. Startup Autobahn @ Telekom focused on Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS). Yesterday, the auto business was hardware or vehicle-centric. Tomorrow, the industry will have to go beyond the hardware or cars to organize the entire customer journey from A to B hence Mobility-as-a-Service (see “The service shift,” link).
Data on the autobahn
As part of the Startup Autobahn program, T-Systems invited the platform and a curated selection of MaaS startups to its headquarters in Bonn. Under the slogan “The Future of Data Empowered Mobility” (see “Power shift to data,” link) they brought together representatives of start-ups and corporations from the tech and automotive industries.
Top Telekom executives
As T-Systems is Germany’s top IT service provider (see “T-Systems is the #1,” link), it invited top executives to join the show. And as MaaS is about business as well as the technology it invited corporate officers from both fields: Francois Fleutiaux, Chief Commercial Officer at T-Systems, shared business insights, while Dr. Maximilian Ahrens, the T-Systems Chief Technology Officer, elaborated on technology. Francois emphasized the importance of leveraging startups to energize and accelerate the traditional business systems of big companies (see the interview with Francois at 0:30 – 0:45 and 2:30 – 2:45, link). Maximilian reminded the audience that Deutsche Telekom is a service provider that understands its auto customer so well, because it is already invested in many of the new mobility areas and own assets, such as electrification, Charge Now (link), and connected cars, Park and Joy (link).
Figure: Francois Fleutiaux, Chief Commercial Officer at T-Systems, sharing business insights at the Startup Autobahn
Accelerating onto the data autobahn with the Telekom Data Intelligence Hub
Another investment to create infrastructure for others to be successful on the data autobahn is the new Telekom Data Intelligence Hub. It is a family of products that include a data hub and data marketplace with an attached workshop for Analytics and Artificial Intelligence. Everyone says “Data is the new oil,” but just like oil, it also takes extensive and time-consuming refining to be able to leverage the data assets with analytics (see “Data is broken,” link). Furthermore, DIH enables safe and secure data pools and data sharing. It functions as a neutral data custodian with the highest security standards, and it can guarantee the respective data sovereignty through decentralized data storage. It is implementing the International Dataspace (IDS, link) as a cloud-based service offering to reduce the cost and time of sharing data.
