AI-Driven Success: Insights From Hitachi Vantara

In an exclusive interview with CRNtv, Kimberly King, SVP of strategic partners and alliances at Hitachi Vantara, and Greg Bucyk, VP of global strategy and GTM and strategic alliances at Hitachi Vantara, discuss the rapid growth of AI and the importance of data growth and protection.

What's new in Hitachi Vantara's partner business, and what are you focusing on with your partners today?

Kim: I like simple, and as such it’s been my goal to introduce ease of doing business while also having everyone aligned to our three tenants of Trusted, Profitable and Sustainable. We introduced intelligent pricing where partners can gain immediate access to street-level pricing and over 85 percent of our quotes are approved within four hours. We introduced eLearning and reduced compliance training by 30 percent. Plus, our premier platform family now utilizes one operating system which reduces the burden of education and training, meaning our partners can focus on being in front of their customers without compromising knowledge transfer.

It’s also been important for us as an organization to wake up thinking partner first in all that we do. This is taking hold as we see year over year our revenue contribution through partners continues to grow and dominate our route to market. That said, I won’t be letting up on the gas pedal, as I know success comes with partners.

How does the rapid growth of AI and enterprise data impact your innovations and partner business and what sets you apart from other technology vendors?

Greg: It certainly has become the buzz word, and it does offer a lot of promise. However, there is a but. We’ve already seen reports of over 60 percent of projects in this area failing to return the expected outcomes, and the added costs for GPUs, power and cooling are not to be overlooked. On the flip side, Hitachi Vantara’s Virtual Storage Platform has taken the podium as the number-one ENERGY STAR®-rated storage in the industry. In a sense, we are the carbon offset. Kim, I recall you had spoken to this at a recent event.

Kim: That’s right. I joke about us being the savings account while the GPU guys are the checking account, drawing down the balance every day. But it’s true. There needs to be a strategy around AI deployment, not only in the hardware and software that you need, but also in understanding how fit your data is.

Greg: In summary, we have uniqueness in that not only can we prepare all customers with a foundational readiness for the infrastructure, but we also can help in assuring the data holdings are ready for AI. For those who have already made progress around their data and are ready to fully commit, our Hitachi iQ offering is one of the most advanced in the world with existing projects already underway, including leveraging our technology and alliances with the likes of Nvidia, Supermicro, Cisco, Weka IO and many other players who have developed specific tooling for AI and automation.

What makes partnering with Hitachi Vantara special, and what's your main message to companies considering partnering with you?

Kim: When I joined Hitachi Vantara now over five years ago and got to meet with our partners I was amazed not only by how sophisticated they were, but also by the level of trust we had amongst us and them, the fact that we consciously are not over distributed, have a robust rules of engagement with a DealReg system we all understand, and our commitment to each other. We don’t have 15 partners competing for the same business, driving margins down. Partner profitability is important to us.

Our partner program is modular and facilitates growth especially towards services and specialized intellectual property that the partners bring. And something that we don’t scream about enough is our ability to deliver. Our fulfilment of our products is world class. We always seem to find a way to get the product to the customer, and knowing time is money, this has a real positive impact on the partner. Greg, any final thoughts?

Greg: Kim, you are so correct in your statements. Coming from the field myself, I can tell you it was a pleasure to be working in such a positive manner with our partners. Having the confidence that Hitachi Vantara was always there to support the partner and assure success allowed everyone to look forward and not get consumed in fixing problems.

For more information on Hitachi Vantara on their website.