Webcast recap: Driving open software development in automotive

Github Regional Sales Director Clay Nelson and MapBox’s Vice President of Business Development, Alex Barth explored how software development is evolving in the automotive space in a recent webcast.

With high consumer expectations, advances in software development, and new open source principles in highly-regulated industries, Barth says automotive companies must evolve or fall behind. Here are a few highlights from the webcast and a link to watch the full recording.

Watch the webcast

Growing consumer expectations

It’s never been easier for consumers to interact with each other and the brands they care about, especially with social media platforms at their fingertips. That means automotive brands need to focus more than ever on acknowledging and meeting consumer expectations—even when they ask for the next wave of vehicles to be “smartphones on wheels”. Coupled with the pressures of maintaining safety, quality, and security within code, these demands call for the adoption of open source principles and faster development.

New workflow complexities

In order to achieve the “rolling smartphone” effect, computing within vehicles is changing rapidly, from isolated micro-controllers to more integrated systems—and teams can no longer work in isolation. They’re racing to deliver consumer-requested features that have more complexity and dependencies, which is especially challenging in a highly-regulated industry.

Accelerated collaborative development

With more modern workflows, such as the GitHub Flow, organizations can develop collaborative processes that allow for more visibility. This enables developers to communicate through code in a more straightforward (but still secure) way, rather than getting stuck in the same developmental bottleneck that has choked the industry for years.

To learn more about how GitHub works within the automotive industry, watch the webcast.

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Written by

Kara Drapala

@kdraps