We aim to offer an integrated smart city platform: Hitachi Data Systems

With everything from automobiles to electricity grids increasingly transmitting data, ‘Internet of Things (IoT)’, is fast becoming a norm. Hitachi Data Systems is transforming itself from being a provider of data storage hardware to providing software platforms and data analytics solutions.

The global business opportunity in IoT is estimated to reach $11 trillion by 2025 and its application in the society is estimated to be $2 trillion by then. The company calls its IoT vertical ‘Social Innovation’.

Kevin Eggleston, Senior Vice-President (Social Innovation), Hitachi Data Systems, spoke to BusinessLine about the business and opportunities in India.

Egglestone was joined by Tony Field, Senior Director, Social Innovation Business Unit (Asia Pacific). Excerpts:

Your competitors call it the Internet of Things. Why did you choose to call it ‘Social Innovation Business’?

Eggleston: This nomenclature was decided in Japan. I suspect it relates to bringing innovations. Perhaps a better translation would have been societal innovation. But, what you notice from this business is that the market is still of Internet of Things. The name also ties to the overarching culture of Hitachi, which is very much like the Tata Group, where businesses want to make a difference to the society as well as make money.

What are the focus areas for the Social Innovation Business in the Asia-Pacific region, specific to India?

Field: Our focus areas are public safety offerings, and offerings in healthcare, using primarily the analytics capability of Pentaho. The other area we are focussing on is the integration with Hitachi’s different business units.

From an Indian perspective, the smart cities project is a big opportunity and underpinning that is safe cities. For us, it would be the public safety aspect that could be a huge opportunity. IDC (International Data Corporation) predicts Internet of Things to be a $583-billion opportunity in the region by 2020, and when you look at public safety across the region, then video analytics alone is predicted to be a $3.3-billion opportunity; India is about 20 per cent of that.

How are you tackling the smart city projects and are you offering integrated solutions?

Eggleston: Our goal is not to do customised one-off projects, but offer an integrated smart city platform. The fact that not many people can offer an integrated solution is a competitive advantage that we have.

What is the strategy to engage more with governments, since most of your offerings are linked to public sector projects?

Eggleston: Most of the government engagements come via the smart city projects.

In some cases Central governments are involved, for example what Prime Minister Modi is doing with the smart city project. At the Central government level, we tend to see a lot of engagement around the security aspect, with intelligence agencies using our technology and leveraging our analytics capabilities with Pentaho.

Field: Another aspect that governments in the APAC region are looking at is using data analytics to break out people of the welfare cycle. What they want to do is to suggest analytics to look at the history of a person, see why they are receiving welfare, and try to break them out of a welfare cycle.

The reporter was in Shanghai at the invitation from Hitachi Data Systems.

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