Hitachi Vantara invests in its partner business as a critical growth component

Hitachi Vantara has highlighted the investments and progress the company has made in its partner business that have netted the company and its partners’ significant growth over the last year. As Hitachi Vantara continues its transformation to help customers maximize the value of their data, the company has invested significantly in its partner business as a critical component for growth.

Most recently, the new Cisco and Hitachi Adaptive Solutions for Converged Infrastructure demonstrate the steps Hitachi Vantara is taking to address market demand through collaboration with and investment in its strategic relationships. In September 2018, Hitachi Vantara delivered VSP PRO solutions, which are simplified, partner-optimized configurations of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP). The revamped Hitachi Vantara Partner Program, launched in April 2018, includes new competencies, delivery models, enablement and incentives.These initiatives demonstrate the increased focus Hitachi Vantara is placing on its partner ecosystem to successfully deliver solutions that help customers address their transformation challenges.

Cisco and Hitachi are capitalizing on their aligned priorities for data center modernization and cloud to deliver an intelligent converged solution that helps enterprises worldwide meet the challenges and position themselves for the future. Cisco and Hitachi Adaptive Solutions for Converged Infrastructure is a Cisco Validated Design (CVD) that combines the companies’ best-in-class technologies including Hitachi storage and Cisco compute and networking. Engineered, tested and validated by both Cisco and Hitachi, the new “meet-in-the-market” solution is designed for partners to address demand for a validated Hitachi and Cisco converged infrastructure that supports high-end, enterprise-grade,multi-use application workloads and delivers an agile, operationally efficient solution for continuous data availability and service-level agreement (SLA) management. It will be supported by both Cisco and Hitachi.

Over the last year, Hitachi Vantara has seen high single-digit growth in its converged business through partners. Sold and delivered by partners, the new Cisco and Hitachi solution is expected to increase opportunity for both companies’ partner ecosystems in this space.

Introduced in September 2018, the pre-configured, cost-optimized Hitachi VSP PRO semi-customizable configurations are a prime example of how the company is delivering on its promises to simplify and accelerate sales cycles for partners. Created expressly for the partner community, Hitachi VSP PRO solutions allow partners to quickly and easily quote small, medium, large and extra-large systems with an automated, self-service sales model that reduces the process from several hours to a matter of minutes. Hitachi VSP PRO solutions have also helped partners initiate conversations with customers about VSP solutions more broadly, contributing to year-over-year growth in partner sales of Hitachi VSP storage arrays.

When the company launched its new Partner Program in April 2018, Hitachi Vantara introduced new competencies, delivery models and flexibility for partners to choose how they engage with the company. In addition, the company reiterated its commitment to maximize profitability and improve self-service and automation for its partners. Since the program launched, the company has continued to deliver against these promises, resulting in improved overall partner engagement and satisfaction, growth of partner business revenues including double-digit growth among solution providers, and rapid expansion of the company’s ecosystem in strategic focus areas such as big data analytics and IoT. The latter has resulted in additional collaboration with several strategic partners, including Tech Data and Computacenter, to improve the recruitment, onboarding, and sales and pre-sales enablement of a growing ecosystem of partners focused on big data analytics and IoT – an ecosystem that has grown nearly 300 percent year over year.

Toshio Nakano, President of IT Platform Products Management Division, Hitachi, Ltd, says, “The new Cisco and Hitachi Adaptive Solutions for Converged Infrastructure build on our global Cisco partnership, paving the way for expanding our collaboration into new areas. Together, we will continue innovating to create customer value through data across solutions that address a broad range of customer needs.”