Hitachi Vantara realigns to accelerate in hybrid cloud & AI sectors

Hitachi Vantara, a subsidiary of Hitachi, has undergone a strategic realignment to enhance its agility in responding to market opportunities, particularly in the hybrid cloud and generative AI sectors. The restructuring entails integrating Hitachi Vantara with Hitachi's IT Platform Products Management Division.

This consolidation is expected to streamline business development, research and development (R&D), and the production of data infrastructure solutions. The alignment comes at a critical juncture as data processing demands surge due to the rise of generative AI technologies. Surveys indicate that nearly 88% of IT leaders are struggling to manage AI projects and the resulting influx of data, while 90% face challenges integrating AI with other systems.

Akinobu Shimada, previously the President of Hitachi's IT Platform Products Management Division, has been appointed Chairman of Hitachi Vantara. Shimada's new role is seen as a reinforcement of the strong connection between Hitachi Vantara and Hitachi.

The restructured Hitachi Vantara will leverage extensive infrastructure and data storage experience across manufacturing and hybrid cloud platforms. This new organisational setup is expected to innovate and adapt to market needs in real-time, building on the company's long-standing expertise in managing data across mission-critical environments.

Sheila Rohra, CEO of Hitachi Vantara, remarked, "The rise of generative AI and the explosion in data processing power are pushing the pace of change, and many organisations are struggling to keep up. This next phase of business transformation is designed to help us accelerate our execution and scale our business to identify and capitalise on market opportunities in real-time."

Rohra added, "This extension of development, manufacturing, sales, and delivery capabilities will strengthen our ability to provide our customers with the AI-driven data performance, reliability, and resiliency they need across their hybrid cloud environments to achieve real-world impact and growth."

As part of the new organisational structure, the synergy between Hitachi Vantara and Hitachi aims to bring R&D and engineering closer to key markets globally. Shimada noted, "Our strong partnership across the organisations has helped to create the right synergy to formalise a Hitachi Vantara structure that brings R&D and engineering closer to our key markets around the globe."

"Given the impressive amount of industry expertise and technical understanding infused into our business, I am confident that we will lead with a unified digital infrastructure and AI strategy and execution plan that enables us to deliver high-impact outcomes for our customers and positions our business for continued growth," said Shimada.

Hitachi Vantara is also advancing its hybrid cloud storage development, which aims to combine on-premises and cloud computing seamlessly. This approach is designed to provide safety, high performance, reliability, and cost advantages in processing critical, large-scale data for complex business requirements. The company recently announced a collaboration with NVIDIA to create a new generation of AI solutions called Hitachi iQ, which layers industry-specific capabilities on top of its AI solution stack to deliver outcomes more specific and relevant to an organisation's business needs.