Microsoft Azure has strengthened its dominance of the connected car cloud market with a worldwide deal to convert future Volkswagen cars into mobile Internet of Things (IoT) hubs. For Microsoft, this is vindication of its long-standing focus on the connected car, initiated by Bill Gates over 20 years ago, leading to Azure mopping up most of the world’s leading car makers. The latest collaboration with Volkswagen looks like the biggest so far since it is global and with the world’s second biggest car maker, but some of our peers are wrong to suggest it goes deeper than any other such partnership between Microsoft and car makers. That may have been true until March 2017 but then Microsoft announced it was…