Ducati and Lenovo Deepened their Partnership by Extend Long-Standing Technology Deal
Ducati MotoGP, a motorcycle-manufacturing division of Italian company Ducati, has signed a three-year deal with Lenovo, its long-standing technology partner. This three-year deal will see the Ducati team dig deeper into its partner’s product portfolio. The company is in pursuit of increasing performance on the track by embracing HPC, virtual desktops, and edge computing.
On the other hand, Lenovo will see the team double-down use of its artificial intelligence, data analytics, and edge computing devices. They will help them to improve the performance of their riders in the 2021 racing season.
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The deal capitalizes on the past work of both the firms since Ducati first signed up Lenovo in 2018 as its technology partner. The tech giant has focused on equipping the motorcycle manufacturer with tablets, PCs, and edge computing devices.
All these devices will collect and analyze race data, inform the design, and configuration of bikes.
Ducati engineers are known to use compact ThinkSystem SE350 edge server device to analyze data generated during races and training. They also use Lenovo ThinkPad P1 mobile workstation laptops for data processing from the bikes.
Furthermore, Lenovo has also deployed high-performance computing to enables Ducati’s technicians to run high-speed aerodynamic models which give them the space to design new bikes at pace while adhering to the safety and quality standards.
The renewed partnership will deepen the ties between the two companies and their use of data. It will also introduce technologies that will bolster the Ducati team’s ability to collaborate and work remotely.
Both the firms are also exploring the potential for augmented and virtual reality technologies for the design process for its motorbikes.
They have also confirmed that the Ducati MotoGP team will rebrand itself and race under the name Ducati Lenovo Team.
In a Q&A, Luca Rossi, senior vice-president of Lenovo, credited the shared values of both the firms as a key factor in their joint decision to forge technological ties.
Rossi said, “We have been learning [through the partnership] that most of the values between Lenovo and Ducati are shared: performance, speed, the quality design, the reliability, and – clearly – innovation.”
Further adding, “The world is changing, and the technology is arriving everywhere and in the [world of] MotoGP the best is yet to come.”
“It was important for us to find a company as iconic as Ducati, poised to win and [who we can] help win with our technology. There are already many examples in AR/VR, in our datacentre with artificial intelligence and our PCs,” he said.
“These are all technological areas where Lenovo can contribute to Ducati, and we also believe we can learn [from them], and [Ducati] will be for sure learning for us.”