Ericsson and Microsoft Corp. are integrating their technologies to advance the delivery of connected car services globally.

As part of the partnership, Ericsson is building its Connected Vehicle Cloud as-a-service on top of the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform. The integrated platform will allow automakers to deploy and scale global vehicle services such as fleet management, over-the-air software updates and connected safety services much easier and faster while reducing costs, according to a Dec. 19 news release.

Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform runs on the Azure cloud platform.

Ericsson's Connected Vehicle Cloud connects more than 4 million vehicles across 180 countries worldwide.