ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY
With its long baseline in computing , Hitachi realised it had some competitive advantages which it decided to bring forward . Mainframe systems , logical and physical partitioning of storage were moved away from proprietary frameworks into open systems .
“ Five years ago , we brought that technology to markets in Europe and rest of the world . That is our converged business ,” adds Furniss . “ Do we need services around that - absolutely . We manage customer assets , either they own it or we own it , either on-premises or in a cloud environment . Fundamentally we are a cloud company now .”
The Hitachi group is restructuring to bring forward its core competencies from multiple divisions , built over tens of years , into the One Hitachi initiative . Its ability to apply IoT solutions into business functions is being consolidated into its Social Innovation Business division . While its IoT technologies and solutions know-how is being consolidated into Hitachi Insights . “ A lot of our executives from Hitachi Data Systems , are also regional executives of the entire group . The creation of Hitachi Insights , which is a group designed to build IoT solutions and bring them to market , is run by ex-Hitachi Data Systems executives ,” explains Richard Gadd , Senior Vice President and General Manager , EMEA at Hitachi Data Systems .
Tom Pegrume , Vice President of Emerging Markets EMEA at Hitachi Data Systems , cites the example of the railways in UK , where Hitachi has sold its railway rolling stock as an on-time service utility , with a 30-year service level agreement , versus the traditional sale of a capital asset with a 30-year depreciation cycle .
Hitachi Data Systems is currently managing 500,000 Petabytes of data globally , hosted in a pay-as-you-go environment , and has been doing this for under ten years now . It also manages the Hitachi Enterprise Cloud which offers VMware on demand , either on-premises or in the cloud . Another opportunity area where Hitachi Data Systems is active is in private cloud adoption .
The contribution of revenue from the Information and Telecommunication System business division to the overall revenue of the Hitachi group has remained close to 20 % from 2009 to 2016 . Hitachi Data Systems is part of the Information and Telecommunication System business division .( Source Ten year financial highlights . Data based on US GAAP . Yen to $ = 0.00868772 )
Other than digital transformation , the enterprise switchover to SAP HANA is another strong driver
Is the consumption model profitable for Hitachi Data Systems ? Not always in year one , or even in year two , but it always delivers a profit over the duration . It needs to run for some period of time and is not a short-term return on investment model .
Hitachi Data Systems works closely with global and regional system integrators including CSC , TCS , Cognizant , Tech Mahindra , to name some . These integration partners have done extensive evaluation of Hitachi Data Systems ’ portfolio including software , storage management , logical partitioning , content software , amongst others . One of the reasons why Hitachi Data Systems is attractive with global and regional systems integrators is because it does not compete with them in the market place with its own services .
“ This is the fastest part of our go to market . The scale of the transformation that our customers are demanding , as part of their digital transformation , actually in many instances is broader than we can offer in isolation . So , the collaboration with our global system integrator partners is critical . That is something we are really looking to drive in the emerging regions ,” explains Furniss .
“ They understand how to modernise the application environment within a customer . And they are very demanding from a pricing and performance availability perspective .”
Other than digital transformation , the enterprise switch-over to SAP HANA is another strong driver .
“ SAP is one of our fastest growing markets in the converged space . The speed at which we are seeing the adoption of SAP HANA is enormous . We see everybody going to market . Sometimes it is a regional or local systems integrator and sometimes
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