Hitachi is strengthening its integration of GenAI into its operations by collaborating with Google Cloud and establishing the Hitachi Google Cloud Business Unit. This strategic partnership aims to enhance the conglomerate’s enterprise operations and drive the growth of its core digital business, Lumada.
In addition to leveraging GenAI for various purposes such as customer service improvement, the primary focus of this collaboration is the creation of the Hitachi Google Cloud Business Unit. This unit will leverage Google’s advanced technologies, including the Gemini large language model, Vertex AI platform, and other cloud AI tools, to develop innovative GenAI solutions for enterprises.
Company will utilize Google Cloud’s AI capabilities to enhance efficiency and drive innovation,” stated Toshiaki Tokunaga, Executive VP at Hitachi. “Technologies such as Vertex AI and Gemini models will empower our teams to cater to a wide range of customer requirements.”
Hitachi’s collaboration with GenAI
The partnership builds upon Hitachi’s current efforts to integrate GenAI into its operations. While primarily focused on internal applications, the company took a proactive step in May 2023 by establishing a new “Generative AI Center.”
The center’s objective is to bring together experts to mitigate risks associated with utilizing insights from GenAI. It serves as a repository of knowledge for Hitachi’s 320,000 employees, aiding them in tasks such as writing, summarizing, translating, and code generation. These insights are then leveraged for consulting services provided to clients implementing it’s solutions.
In conjunction with Microsoft Japan, a Lumada Alliance Program partner, Hitachi announced its intention to offer environment setup and operational support services that combine Azure OpenAI Service with Hitachi’s expertise in mission-critical cloud system integration.
Subsequently, the company introduced a new role, the Chief AI Transformation Officer, tasked with embedding GenAI strategy throughout it’s business units and driving productivity enhancements through AI-driven process transformations.
Future plans for the partnership
Enhancing AI competencies is a key objective of the collaboration with Google Cloud. The company aims to train more than 50,000 “GenAI Professionals” on Google’s AI solutions and models as part of its global training program.
“We are strategically aligning our go-to-market approach with Google Cloud to establish clear pathways for accelerated innovation and revenue growth through GenAI,” said Nitesh Banga, CEO of Hitachi’s Digital Engineering business.
The partnership includes aligned sales, marketing and engineering initiatives by the two companies to support enterprise customers throughout their GenAI adoption journey – from strategic planning to implementation and management.
For Google Cloud, which offers an integrated AI stack spanning large language models, development tools and AI-powered applications, the Hitachi alliance fits its vision of upskilling its GenAI capabilities across its internal operations, and across its industries to its business customers.
“Our partnership provides enterprises with the technology, expertise and resources to optimally build, deploy and manage generative AI capabilities,” said Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian.
