Hitachi Digital Services annual analyst event theme was “conversations for the data-driven.” This theme plays well to the firm’s core data-centric storage, data management, and data orchestration strengths. To unlock his firm’s potential, CEO GajenKandiah sees substantial opportunities in areas where hybrid cloud and operational technology align across industries with parent company Hitachi’s industry solutions.
IT, OT, and innovation coming together under the ‘OneHitachi’ banner.
Gajen Kandiah,
CEO Hitachi Digital Services
In the keynote, Mr. Kandiah stressed Hitachi Digital Services ongoing strategy would have three crucial components to best benefit its clients:
With decades of experience in storage, data management, and infrastructure, Hitachi Vantara’s message has often been muddled with the growing adoption of cloud-based data centers. However, as many firms continue to leverage on-premises computing, data management, and security, Hitachi Vantara is working hard to promote its solution as the best of both worlds.
In this slide presented at the event, Hitachi’s team continues to promote that technology innovation starts with having a reliable, robust infrastructure. Exhibit 1 represents its vision of how its solution stack aligns well to meet the challenges firms face in delivering technology innovation.
The main challenge HFS sees in Hitachi Digital Services messaging is its inconsistency when responding to a customer request to connect its data infrastructure messaging to customer business needs. While Hitachi Digital Services is positioned to connect needs across data centers, devices, and the cloud from a technology enablement perspective, the interpretation of “What to do with that data?” too often requires the services of a competing firm or the customer to connect all the dots. This is where Hitachi needs to be promoted their application reliability story, see Exhibit 2, more effectively.
By bringing together OT and IT and focusing on Hitachi’s priority industries, including manufacturing, financial, transportation, energy and resources, mining and agriculture, and infrastructure, Hitachi Digital Services can bring its data and infrastructure technology story in-line with the equipment and operational technology of these industries to rely upon.
Hitachi Digital Services customer stories of how insights have been unlocked from devices—from trains to HVAC controls—are where the data-driven discussions got exciting. Discussions with customers indicate it’s abundantly clear that unlocking the value of data-driven decisions comes from collecting, analyzing, and promoting insights from data created by humans and machines. Using real-time tools to monitor, report, and resolve this data provided customers with clear revenue-based outcomes and revealed where the Hitachi Digital Services solutions might have the most significant impact.
Adding software to the mix was often too lightly touched upon. The vendor’s investment in its Lumadasoftware is an essential part of the operationalization and contextualization of data. While Hitachi Digital Services presented this as its Intelligent DataOpssolution, it may shine in the modernization of a firm’s data fabric. Properly positioned, this solution should be a key part of bridging the data journey from a storage array to cloud solutions like Snowflake and then back into visualization tools for line-of-business benefits. Further, the awkward integration of Globallogic, a digital design and experience firm, can come across as competing for the customer’s attention versus being a value add.
Your technology team likely knows Hitachi Digital Services as a firm that stores, manages, and optimizes data. This strength may have been a bit of an anchor weight when considering it as part of your cloud strategy, as the assumption was that hyperscalers could take care of this for you. Yet, over the past decade, it has invested in software, application, and data tools, experts and expertise tools that make Hitachi Digital Services an interesting consideration for data and application modernization, but you may have to give the company a nudge here or there to maximize the engagement.
Joel looks after HFS Research’s software and applications services. As firms adopt a cloud-native operating model, software-as-a-service (SaaS) is the primary way of getting things done. His research delves into how companies, service providers, and software vendors architect and deliver code via the cloud. Joel’s research covers the latest trends in developing code on microservices architectures while using containers and Kubernetes to adopt and integrate SaaS solutions into complex business workflows. Topics Joel is passionate about include edge computing, the role of 5G in cloud services delivery, governance and compliance, low-code, and go-to-market strategies for software and services.
Executive Research Leader
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