To jointly develop an industry-leading middleware solution for the mobility ecosystem, the leading independent software development and integration partner to the automotive and mobility industry - KPIT Technologies, has joined the global technology company ZF Group.
A mature, modular middleware solution developed by the two companies can be deployed across OEMs and represent a transformative opportunity for the mobility ecosystem. In addition, this cooperation will also bring onboard solutions from other technology companies, including semiconductor specialists, software companies, cloud services and start-ups.
The middleware development will draw upon KPIT’s experience in several production programmes, expertise in architecture consulting & software integration and its strengths in cloud-based connected services. In addition, it will use KPIT’s existing assets, tools and accelerators and other core infrastructure.
Kishor Patil, CEO, KPIT Technologies, said, “OEMs want to explore open and scalable middleware solutions that can set foundation for the future generation of vehicles and bring significant quality and productivity improvements. An appropriate middleware solution will help OEMs and our mobility customers to transition well to a solid central computer architecture. Together, we bring software expertise, systems understanding, and knowledge of OEMs and mobility customer needs. This development cooperation for middleware solutions will add immense value to our global automotive and mobility customers and significantly shorten time for the development cycles”.
Dr Dirk Walliser, SVP Corporate R&D, ZF Group, said, “The next generation of vehicles that come into the market will feature electric drives, a high degree of automated functions as well as connectivity, and they will be software-defined. Using what we jointly develop with KPIT, we can offer our automotive customers even more comprehensive software solutions that fit seamlessly together with our system portfolio for the software-defined vehicle: high-performance computing, software, intelligent sensors and smart actuators.”
In January 2021, ZF established a Global Software Centre responsible for developing software systems for future architectures on a group-wide level. One core product is an automotive middleware that serves as a “mediator” between a vehicle computer’s operating system and its software applications. Its development is closely connected to application software development for mobility domains like automated driving, integrated safety, vehicle motion control, and electric mobility.