Last month, Nissan Motor Corp said its board remained committed to the carmaker's alliance with Renault SA and Mitsubishi Motors Corp, after directors met to discuss the ongoing investigation into former chairman Carlos Ghosn and ways to bolster governance.

Traditional automakers, many of whom ushered in an era of incredible disruption nearly a century ago, now face disruption themselves from four modern forces -- connected, autonomous, shared and electric cars. The infrastructure and scale required to build a connected car is incredibly complicated, expensive and resource intensive. At its core, it's a software challenge, and a chief obstacle for these brands is integrating the complex cloud technology required to deliver next-generation driving experiences. Today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, we announced the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform, a set of services built on the Microsoft Azure cloud and designed to empower auto manufacturers to create custom connected driving experiences. This is not an in-car operating system or a "finished product;" it's a living, agile platform that starts with the cloud as the foundation and aims to address five core scenarios that our partners have told us are key priorities: predictive maintenance, improved in-car productivity, advanced navigation, customer insights and help building autonomous driving capabilities.

YOKOHAMA – The top executive overseeing connected vehicles at Nissan and Renault believes the benefits of developing a common technology for connectivity within the Japanese and French auto partnership outweigh the risks of sustaining huge damage from a possible defect or cyberattack. Ogi Redzic, senior vice president at the Renault-Nissan Alliance, oversees such connected services, including staying connected with family, navigating best routes and remote control of vehicles -- an area where all the world's automakers are trying to gain an edge. Redzic, formerly of Motorola and Nokia, was tapped for the post at the alliance earlier this year. He told reporters Tuesday at Nissan's Yokohama headquarters that the alliance has begun hiring 300 people to build such software applications for future cars, in addition to 300 employees at Nissan Motor Co. and 300 at Renault SA already working on the effort. Nissan-Renault hopes to lead in connected vehicles, in addition to green cars and self-driving cars, the two other increasingly vital auto technologies.