Hitachi Vantara boosts enterprise tech with new Chairman and AI focus

Hitachi Vantara, a subsidiary of Hitachi specializing in data storage, infrastructure, and hybrid cloud management, has appointed Akinobu Shimada as chairman to strengthen its ties with Hitachi Ltd.  

Shimada brings a wealth of experience to his new role, having started his journey with Hitachi back in 2005. Over the years, he has held various positions within the company, focusing primarily on long-term business and product strategy in IT platform sectors such as storage, server, and data management. 

This appointment comes alongside a strategic realignment within Hitachi Vantara, intended to accelerate the company's growth trajectory. The realignment places a heightened emphasis on responding to market opportunities, particularly in the realms of hybrid cloud and generative AI. 

Integral to this realignment is the integration of Hitachi Vantara with Hitachi’s IT Platform Products Management Division. This integration brings together expertise in manufacturing, hybrid cloud, and data storage, fostering collaboration aimed at driving meaningful business outcomes for customers. 

“The rise of generative AI and the explosion in data processing power are pushing the pace of change, and many organizations are struggling to keep up,” said Sheila Rohra, CEO of Hitachi Vantara. “This next phase of business transformation is designed to help us accelerate our execution and scale our business to identify and capitalize on market opportunities in real-time. 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 in order to realize real-world impact and growth.” 

“Our strong partnership across the organizations has helped to create the right synergy to formalize a Hitachi Vantara structure that brings R&D and engineering closer to our key markets around the globe,” said Shimada. “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.” 

Recently Hitachi Vantara also announced a collaboration with NVIDIA to develop Hitachi iQ, a new generation of AI solutions tailored to specific industries. By layering industry-specific capabilities onto its AI solution stack, Hitachi Vantara aims to deliver outcomes that are more relevant and impactful for organizations.