‘We See 100 Smart Cities as a Big Opportunity’

—Vivekanand Venugopal Vice President and General Manager, Hitachi Data Systems, India

Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) is expanding its social innovation business in India and groping for business opportunities in the government sector especially for Digital India and 100 Smart Cities. Vivekanand Venugopal, Vice President and General Manager, Hitachi Data Systems, India divulges more details in an interaction with us.

HDS is developing solutions for a variety of markets that combine the power of connected devices and technologies.

Voice&Data: Where does HDS see itself amid the hot trends such as big data, cloud, and IoT? What kind of business opportunities do you foresee?

Vivekanand Venugopal: HDS uniquely combines its deep domain expertise in information management, data analytics, and the rich industrial heritage of its sister companies to deliver on our vision for social innovation. We are building on our IoT and data analytics market momentum in 2015, with an aggressive rollout of new solutions and services planned.

With various trends emerging fast like digital transformation, eGovernance, and Digital India, India is strategically poised to drive robust growth for technology companies like HDS. We see a lot of opportunity in the Digital India and Smart Cities campaign, not just as a technology provider but more as a social innovation specialist. On the Digital India campaign, we are speaking to the government and partners on various opportunities. India is a very important market for HDS, growing in double-digit figures with a product growth of 30% and software revenue growth of 35%.

Voice&Data: What’s your social innovation business? What offerings does it have in store for your customers?

Vivekanand Venugopal: Earlier this year, Hitachi formed a Social Innovation Business Unit (SIBU) that combines some of the brightest minds and subject matter experts in the fields of energy, healthcare, telecom, public safety, and civil and national security, the Internet of Things, big data and advanced analytics, among others, from across Hitachi Ltd, Hitachi Data Systems, and Hitachi Consulting. The SIBU is focused on the creation of scalable and repeatable end-to-end solutions developed from the full spectrum of technologies, products, services, and expertise available from the Hitachi family of companies. The HDS Social Innovation Business Unit is comprised of more than 600 employees globally, who are teaming with thousands of other Hitachi Social Innovation employees and leveraging Hitachi’s $1 bn investment in making social innovation vision a reality.

Voice&Data: What are the focus areas for your social innovation business in India?

Vivekanand Venugopal: Our social innovation strategy forms the crux of our growth story in India. Along with the opportunities thrown up by the government’s Digital India and Smart Cities initiatives, we have proven expertise in working closely with the governments globally to implement our SI solutions that radically improve peoples’ way of living.

Hitachi Data Systems is developing purpose-built solutions for a variety of markets that combine the power of connected devices and technologies or the Internet of Things (IoT) with operational technology (OT), machine-to-machine (M2M), advanced data analytics, and the best-of-breed IT infrastructure, all in a unified, fully integrated stack.

The transformation has already begun as industries around the globe start using our social innovation solutions to take advantage of the IoT.

Telecom Analytics: Network operators are using our tools to access real-time data analytics and identify potential problems before they affect their customers and deliver consistent service.

Public Safety: Our public safety solutions build safer societies and environments, respond enable quick response to situations, and increase the effectiveness of limited workforces and funding.

Connected Health: Healthcare providers use our integrated care solutions to aggregate patient data and access as well as operational and financial data to enable evidence-based medicine.

IT Analytics: Enterprises can transform machine data into actionable insights using a cloud-based machine-tomachine analytics solution that enables IT teams to gain intelligence.

Voice&Data: Through your social innovation business, are you trying to reap on Indian government’s smart city drive?

Vivekanand Venugopal: We are looking at opportunities in the Digital India and the 100 Smart Cities campaigns for our social innovation solutions. We are working with the government and the ecosystem players to make the Digital India vision a success. Some large government projects are already using our infrastructure to rollout citizen services including mygov.in and NPR (National Population Register). Globally, we have implemented solutions like traffic management, water management, smart grids, electric vehicles’ charging management, and low carbon infrastructures in several cities including Greater Manchester, New Mexico, and Hawaii.

Voice&Data: How do you engage in government projects—directly or through your partners?

Vivekanand Venugopal: As an organization, we work closely with our partner ecosystem to architect next-generation customer experiences across industries, including the government sector. Though we do not directly work with the government, but through our partners and distributors network. We are currently in talks with our partners and the government to asses and implement necessary initiatives that will enable digital inclusion and deliver information for all. We have a strong ecosystem of partners in India which can take our solutions, integrated with their IPs, and accelerate the rollout of the social innovation solutions locally and support the governments’ vision of digitally empowered citizens.