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Omdia analysts attended a Hitachi Digital Services analyst day and provide highlights from the event and the HDS offering for manufacturing.

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Summary

Omdia analysts attended the Hitachi Digital Services (HDS) analyst day event in London on September 11, which was packed with updates across a range of technologies, capabilities, and sectors. Some key topics and aligned areas with Omdia coverage included Industry 4.0, generative AI (GenAI), cloud engineering, and sustainability (alongside digital transformation).

With a current research focus for Omdia being the manufacturing sector, it was great to hear HDS provide updates about technology and applications specific to that vertical.

Who is HDS?

HDS is a technology services and solutions company that specializes in OT‒IT integration with an OT-first approach, leveraging its capabilities across a range of industry sectors, with manufacturing and transportation as one of its main pillars.

During the event, HDS emphasized the advantages and capabilities of being part of a larger “One Hitachi” company (see Figure 1). It not only supports manufacturers but can learn from the internal experiences of the company, which has an extensive network of 805 delivery and manufacturing centers, producing over 20,000 products.

Figure 1: HDS’s “One Hitachi” solution map Figure 1: HDS’s “One Hitachi” solution map Source: HDS

The company has regionally focused delivery centers for domain expertise, with its manufacturing expertise based in Vietnam.

HDS distinguishes itself by combining horizontal and vertical expertise, seamlessly blending domain knowledge with cloud engineering and AI capabilities, with a particular focus on the mid-market. Its approach allows for solutions tailored to selecting industry sectors to address unique challenges and opportunities within these industries.

It takes an “Accelerator” based approach to projects balancing customization flexibility while minimizing implementation efforts.

Top takeaways and key messages from the event included the following:

  • The launch of numerous new GenAI offerings and development of a common GenAI platform to enable the scaling of customer offerings and to further support an increasing move from proof of concept to production. One of HDS’s goals is to enable innovation through AI adoption (one use case called out was for predictive maintenance). In May 2023, it launched a GenAI center and has invested more than $0.5m in supporting the internal development of AI applications for its factories.
  • A core piece of HDS’s offering is its unified engineering model (see Figure 2). This is designed to be product oriented, resilient, and reliable and has an integrated engineering function providing tighter integration across the manufacturing lifecycle of an organization.

Figure 2: HDS’s unified engineering model Figure 2: HDS’s unified engineering model Source: HDS

  • Hitachi Application Reliability Centers (HARC) is an integrated delivery framework for secure, resilient, and cost-optimized applications. With a full stack of domain experts to leverage, Hitachi demonstrated a range of areas where HARC has enabled digital transformation. From manufacturing paper to mining, and from Manufacturing Execution System (MES) integration to digital twins, the opportunities seem broad.
  • Partnerships are key to Hitachi’s strategy. A good example is how the ecosystem of companies allows industrial IoT to be used as an enabler for IT/OT integration, with HDS operating as an IT/OT system integrator.
  • Sustainability took a back seat in 2024 compared to previous years, as the macro environment placed greater emphasis on revenue generation. HDS still sees sustainability as a key growth driver, closely aligned with digital transformation. The goal is to support clients in addressing specific challenges, while maintaining business as usual. Supporting manufacturing decarbonization through complete supply chain insights is also a core focus.

The event showcased HDS’s perspective on modernizing IT/OT systems through cloud migration and managed services, emphasizing reliability, data quality, and governance. We’re already looking forward to attending the next event to gain further insights into its applications and progress.

Authors

Alex West, Senior Principal Analyst, Manufacturing Technology

Anna Ahrens, Principal Analyst, Industrial IoT

Mark Watson, Senior Director, Manufacturing Technology & Smart Infrastructure

[email protected]