Speaking at the company's NEXT conference, Toshiaki Higashihara said he believes in the need to develop technology that has a social impact
Hitachi CEO Toshiaki Higashihara (Credit: Hitachi)
The large complex issues facing society today cannot be solved by products alone, according to Hitachi CEO Toshiaki Higashihara.
He believes developing capacity in data will help tackle some of the larger issues facing society.
One way his business hopes to achieve this is through its Lumada brand, which was set-up in 2016 to develop solutions that have a positive impact on social change.
Speaking at the Hitachi NEXT 2019 event in Las Vegas, he said: “The issues that we are facing have become more and more complicated like organisation, ageing society, and climate change.
“These complex issues cannot be resolved just by products — to tackle these issues, Hitachi launched Lumada in 2016.
“For Hitachi, Lumada is the engine to achieve our goal of imparting good by solving social issues using data technologies.”
In order to work in a data-driven economy, business needs to embrace new things, says Hitachi Vantara CEO
Hitachi Vantara Chief executive Brian Householder was also in attendance.
First founded in 2017, when the company unified its Pentaho, Hitachi Data Systems and Hitachi Insight Group, Hitachi Vantara specialises in data management and analytics, data operation, video intelligence and IoT.
Householder believes business must embrace such things as part of the new data economy.
He said: “The theme for this event is made by data, and the reason why we chose that is there are new rules in the economy today in terms of how you go about winning.
“So we look at here, we are living in a data economy, and if you look at it here, data is the driver for growth, data is the driver for change.
“So if we look at the new rules that are needed for us to compete, we all need to change, we all need to transform, we all need to embrace new things.
“Whether it’s around leadership, around our people, around our mindsets, around our culture, or how we leverage data to win in this new economy.”
When it comes to the speed or the expanse of the data economy, Householder believes it’s important to do able to do more with less.
He said: “The key one we all need to understand is there are new rules for this data economy, there are new rules in terms of how each and every one us needs to transform.
“There are new rules in terms of how each and every one of us needs to transform, and that transformation is definitely accelerating.
“But it’s around business models, the speed really is the speed of now, things have to happen now.
“The scale that we are all talking about, we joked that there are new words being created to talk about how much data is actually being created.
“It’s not exabytes, it’s zettabytes, all these different words, and so we have to think about a new way to look at this, this not just about doing more, this is about us doing better.
“So in IT, there is this whole phrase around doing more with less, we believe in this new environment, you need to do better with less.”
Hitachi Vantara joins with Disney Parks as its strategic alliance partner
One of Hitachi Vantara’s more high profile partners is Disney Parks, the theme park offshoot of the Walt Disney Company.
Hitachi Vantara announced at the NEXT 2019 conference a new strategic alliance with the entertainment giant, aiming to enhance guest experiences with data-driven operational intelligence.
Higashihara said: “This is a very great example of social innovation and together with Disney, Hitachi makes the world better and happier by delighting people.
“This is a monumental accomplishment, not only for Hitachi Vantara but also for the entire Hitachi family and we are looking forward to a long partnership with Disney.”