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Reference architecture for connected fleets

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Microsoft aims to transform the mass market for data-driven solutions for the management of connected vehicles and fleets, and drive faster, cheaper extraction of value from vehicle data. Our approach for the transformation is to curate an ecosystem of partner solutions, centered around a reference architecture, data model, and a common integration framework that enables composable solutions to use IP from multiple partners.

Connected fleets describe an ecosystem of composable partner solutions that accelerate value derived from vehicle data combined with analytics, geophysical, and back-office technologies to manage vehicles and fleets more effectively.

Current challenges

Navigating fleet management services within the mobility industry presents a unique set of complexities. Businesses are faced with several challenges with rapidly evolving technological advances and changing consumer demands.

  • Limited Extensibility: Siloed data with the current fleet management capabilities limited.
  • Complex Line of Business: Disparate management complicates integrations.
  • High Development and Operation Costs: Heavy customization prevents agility and efficiency.
  • Heterogenous Vehicle Connectivity: Diverging data quality, pricing, and lack of standards.
  • Few Data-Driven Decisions: Missed insights to minimal data synthesis, if any.
  • Manual Processes: Fleet management systems disconnected by back-office.

Benefits of connected fleets

Connected fleets enable partners to build value-added solutions with unique capabilities while also enabling the customer to take advantage of key Microsoft solutions such as Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and others. As a result, connected fleets eliminate the need for fragmented solutions built from multiple sources, allow faster development and time to value, and allow using Microsoft Cloud to reduce costs. More benefits include:

  • Accelerated time to market: Reference architecture and integration frameworks accelerate development and deployment of connected fleet solutions with focus on business value.
  • Increase business agility: Using low-code/no-code approaches and modularity provide flexibility and simplified building of scenarios such as fleet service and analytics.
  • Flexible Ecosystem: Open and scenario-based approach allows integration with multiple data pipelines, and selection of Microsoft and diverse partner solutions as desired.
  • Composable solutions: Standardized data model and integration framework enables composability of Microsoft and partner solution components into coherent solutions by integrators.

Connected fleets reference architecture

The connected fleets reference architecture uses an integration framework based on common data models and industry standards. With flexible, Microsoft Azure-based data ingestion, the architecture supports existing connected vehicle solutions, original equipment manufacturer (OEM) feeds, or data exchanges as appropriate. This flexibility helps to reduce the overall cost of vehicle data acquisition.

The connected fleets reference architecture is backed by secure and scalable Microsoft cloud assets and tooling, which enable mobility customers to simplify and accelerate value from connected vehicles. Additionally, the architecture incorporates an integrated ecosystem of Microsoft assets and partner capabilities, and ensures flexibility and customer choice through composable solutions. Importantly, all solutions are delivered through the Microsoft global network of SI and ISV partners, ensuring widespread scalability and localized proficiency.

The reference architecture overview highlights four primary elements enabled by Microsoft:

  • Vehicle/device messaging: The foundational layer for connected fleets, enabling the secure and private curated relaying of telemetry, other activity data, and instructions or updates to vehicles. This layer of the reference architecture provides flexible and scalable support for these use cases, as well as the ability to ingest and adapt existing data feeds.
  • Fleet integration, data models & harmonization: The integration layer of the reference architecture supports transformation and routing of inbound telemetry to persistent data stores, enabling advanced analytics and inferencing, as well as business systems integration. This mechanism also provides the means for partner solution interoperability and composability.
  • Data and analytics for vehicle and business data on Microsoft Fabric: Microsoft Fabric helps in making the following details available over the entire scope of the vehicle and related data: extensive facilities for self-service data discovery, prescribed analytics and reports, advanced data mining, and the power of AI and ML.
  • Business integration of vehicle telemetry data, alerts, and notification: Data flowing from vehicles can trigger events in near real-time and enable contextual functionality and automation that drives better decision-making and actions to improve operations. The reference architecture materially simplifies making such connections, using no-code and low-code approaches.

Diagram showing the connected fleets reference architecture

Enabling Microsoft technologies

Key Microsoft technologies that enable the connected fleets reference architecture include:

Enabling technology Description
Azure Messaging Services Azure Messaging Services, encompassing Event Grid for event routing, Event Hubs for real-time data ingestion, and Azure Stream Analytics for on-the-fly data processing, ensure seamless interconnectivity between diverse components and applications across multicloud and on-premises environments
Azure Maps Azure Maps is a suite of geospatial services that help you incorporate location-based data into web and mobile solutions. You can use the location and map data to generate insights, inform data-driven decisions, enhance security, and improve customer experiences. This solution uses Azure Maps to link news and posts to geographical coordinates.
Microsoft Fabric Microsoft Fabric is an all-in-one analytics solution for enterprises that covers everything from data movement to data science, Real-Time Analytics, and business intelligence. It offers a comprehensive suite of services, including data lake, data engineering, and data integration, all in one place.
Dynamics 365 Field Service Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service provides manufacturers and service companies with capabilities to track and manage their field service operations by combining workflow automation, scheduling algorithms, and mobility. Using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service leads to increased efficiency, faster resolution times, and improved customer experiences for the organizations.
Power Platform Power Platform is a set of tools that analyzes data, builds solutions, automates processes, and creates virtual agents. It includes Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, and Power Virtual Agents. As part of Microsoft Power Platform, Dataverse is an easy-to-use, easy-to-manage, compliant, secure, scalable, and globally available SaaS data service. Dataverse empowers organizations to work with any type of data and any type of app, and use the data within it to gain insights and drive business action.
Microsoft 365 Microsoft 365 offers a comprehensive suite of productivity tools that includes Outlook for streamlined email and calendar functions, SharePoint for collaborative content management, and Teams for integrated team communication and video conferencing.

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