How to deliver connected car services – without the headache

Lean processes result in shorter development and deployment cycles, enabling the Volkswagen Group to respond to market demands more quickly. The CARIAD Cloud Foundation is therefore a key building block in the digital transformation of the Volkswagen Group.

This Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), running on Microsoft Azure, enables automated, secure, and globally scalable deployment of applications. It takes care of the heavy lifting in the background: “With the CARIAD Cloud Foundation, we can standardize processes, reduce costs, and provide central services. The platform forms the foundation of our cloud architecture and drives the evolution of connected vehicle and customer services,” says Gerrit Lober,  Head of Cloud Foundation & Technology at CARIAD. 

It also simplifies the work for product teams: “Without the CARIAD Cloud Foundation, every team would have to independently set up, operate, and maintain networks and Kubernetes clusters in Azure, manage basic identity and access structures, and handle extensive IT security and compliance reviews. With the platform, the teams can focus directly on developing their applications instead,” explains Senior Product Owner André Hacke.

The three pillars of the CARIAD Cloud Foundation

Every team using the platform benefits from faster development cycles, enhanced security and compliance, as well as lower operational costs. The platform also integrates observability and financial operations services to streamline operations.

The CARIAD Cloud Foundation is built on three pillars:

• Microsoft Azure enables worldwide availability, high resilience, and automated failover to other regions. It provides fundamental infrastructure such as networks, firewalls, certificates, and domains. Product teams can select the Azure services they need based on their use case.
• Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is the heart of the platform: it ensures applications run reliably in large-scale environments using standardized container packages. Kubernetes orchestrates these containers, allowing them to scale horizontally — meaning multiple instances can run simultaneously.
• Megatron Experience Portal (MXP) provides a user-friendly interface for self-service. Teams can create and manage their environments independently, without waiting on the platform team.

Next-generation Megatron²: More flexible, secure, and future-proof

The CARIAD Cloud Foundation team has been providing the platform centrally for more than three years. Around 500 teams across the Volkswagen Group — from Audi to Porsche to Škoda — use it worldwide. Now, Megatron² has launched: “We recently introduced the next generation, which allows teams to work even more flexibly. We’ve enhanced the platform so teams can develop their microservices and Azure services more effectively, with additional security and networking capabilities built in,” says André Hacke.

With the new generation, teams can deploy their applications across multiple regions — ensuring disaster resilience:. If one region experiences an outage, operations continue seamlessly elsewhere. Critical applications always remain available. As applications scale and future vehicle generations come online, the platform now supports an increasing number of global regions.

The network infrastructure has also been significantly improved: the platform now connects systems directly to the internal networks of the Volkswagen Group and supports additional protocols such as HTTP/2, gRPC, TCP, and UDP. Security plays a central role, preparing the platform and applications for the upcoming Cloud Security Standard 4. This includes Mutual Authentication (mTLS) within Kubernetes and stronger controls over which applications may transmit which data and where.

Streamlined processes for faster development

The platform embraces the principles of “Everything as Code” and GitOps. All infrastructure is defined in code (“Infrastructure as Code”). With GitOps — a DevOps approach — code stored in Git is linked with CI/CD pipelines to automatically provision new versions in the cloud. This ensures workflows are consistent and fully traceable.

Thanks to these optimized workflows, development and deployment times are reduced, enabling the Volkswagen Group to respond more quickly to market demands. The CARIAD Cloud Foundation thus supports the digitalization of the VW Group.

The team behind the CARIAD Cloud Foundation consists of internal engineers specializing in cloud technologies, particularly networking and Kubernetes. They also work closely with experts at Microsoft — allowing CARIAD to benefit early from new innovations and influence Azure services directly.