Enterprises are on a mission to become data-driven, however, many organizations continue to struggle with data infrastructure, seeking the right balance to achieve objectives for security, sustainability and agility.

Hitachi Vantara LLC has been working with customers and partners to streamline the transition to a data-driven, intelligent infrastructure. The company is helping enterprises build for the modern stack in an era of distributed data.

“The introduction of edge and hybrid and multicloud are driving a much more distributed environment of data,” said Dan McConnell (pictured), senior vice president of product management, enterprise infrastructure at Hitachi Vantara. “It’s not only the amount of that data, it’s also the importance of that data. [Customers] need an infrastructure that is automated and flexible, with the agility of the cloud models, capable of managing cost and complexity of increasingly distributed hybrid environments.”

McConnell spoke with Lisa Martin, industry analyst for theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the “Data Driven Starts With Intelligent Infrastructure” event on March 30. Martin also spoke with Kevin Purcell, head of global strategic partnerships at Hitachi Vantara; Giorgio Vanzini, VP and global head of partners and alliances at DXC Technology Co.; Adam Lewis, global chief technology officer at Atos SE; and Ashish Nadkarni, group VP and general manager of infrastructure systems, platforms and technologies and BuyerView Research at IDC Research Inc., in separate interviews. They discussed how companies address the key challenges in managing the rapid growth of data and ways that Hitachi Vantara is working with customers and partners to build the modern data stack. (* Disclosure below)

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Dan McConnell:

Maximizing storage efficiency

The potential of intelligent infrastructure has attracted enterprise attention in recent years as companies seek to maximize efficiency from storage platforms. This is where the interface between the data plane, which carries user traffic, and the data persistence layer that stores durable information becomes especially important.

“As companies become data driven, they need to ensure that the storage infrastructure which houses the key data elements that the company relies on is implemented very efficiently,” Nadkarni said. “It requires that there be a tight connection between what we call a data plane and the data persistence layer. What that allows you to do is not just query the data, but also get that intelligence from the data in a native fashion.”

To facilitate this connection, Hitachi Vantara has made a number of enhancements to its portfolio over the past year.

“(We’re) driving ease of use through analytics and automation,” McConnell said. “This is leveraging the telemetry, analytics and automation across the stack to reduce complexity with what we call self-driving infrastructure. We’re accelerating the transition to software defined in hybrid enabled.”

Recent product offerings include Modern Storage Assurance, which extends the lifecycle of storage investment by modernizing and upgrading infrastructure without requiring a forklift upgrade or downtime. Hitachi Vantara also introduced new cybersecurity capabilities that enable immutable copies, as well as a cyber resiliency air gap solution for its VSP product line. And, last year, the company released Cloud Connect with a deep integration into public cloud. 

“It’s a near cloud solution that enables the advantages of enterprise class storage, but direct connects to major cloud service providers for use cases like compute, scaling or backup,” McConnell said.

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Ashish Nadkarni:

Investment in innovation

An example of how the products introduced by Hitachi Vantara are helping customers shift to a new paradigm can be seen in the case of Atos, a European multinational IT and consulting services company. Atos is shifting its entire IT operation across data center and multicloud to one cloud operating model, and Hitachi Vantara has partnered with the firm to provision IoT applications, deliver SAP HANA as a managed service and enable insights from video intelligence.

“That trusted partnership developed into us being a customer, able to consume and understand where (customers) are investing in their innovation,” Lewis said. “We’re listening to our customers and working very closely with them. That new paradigm needs to be built around an understanding that the data centers we’ve been supporting for many years are changing in nature.”

The move by Atos to a single cloud operating model highlights an interest among enterprise customers in not only making data-driven infrastructures more efficient, but also less costly.

“Basically, all of our customers are asked to do more with less,” said DXC’s Vanzini. “They are looking for efficiencies and they’re looking for leverage points and to reduce the overall technical debt.”

Enterprise customers are reallocating and optimizing committed spend on cloud services. Cloud spending momentum has continued to weaken, with SiliconANGLE’s own estimates for the big three hyperscalers’ revenue coming in 2.7% lower than forecasted in November.

“There is tremendous impact from macroeconomic pressures all across the globe,” Purcell said. “I think the impact is causing a change in how many customers are dealing with not only purchasing solutions, but also how they address the challenges and compete in their markets. From a Hitachi perspective, and certainly working with Giorgio and his team at DXC, we’re looking at really developing joint solutions that are recession proof.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Adam Lewis:

Environmental sustainability

Hitachi Vantara is not only working on solutions that are recession proof, but environmentally sound as well. The company has engaged in a number of environmental initiatives and set goals to achieve carbon neutrality at its business sites by 2030 and carbon neutrality through the value chain by 2050.

“We’re looking to help drive more sustainable data centers through infrastructure that we provide that actually uses less energy,” Purcell said. “There’s a lot of focus around green data centers.”

Hitachi Vantara’s focus on a data-driven, intelligent infrastructure is consistent with IT trends toward compute environments as flexible operating entities. Customers are looking for storage solutions that offer the hybrid operating model natively, making seamless use of the entire data footprint while maximizing use of the infrastructure.

“I’ve seen this journey for over 10 years now, almost 15 years,” said IDC’s Nadkarni. “I’ve appreciated the fact that Hitachi Vantara has made some significant strides in modernizing their storage portfolio, going from what it used to be as a data-center-based portfolio to a modern software defined portfolio. They have solutions now that can deliver the data intelligence and the efficient IT footprint that is necessary for most modern applications to scale.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Kevin Purcell and Giorgio Vanzini:

You can watch the full event video here:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the “Data-Driven Starts With Intelligent Infrastructure” event. Neither Hitachi Vantara LLC, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE