Hitachi Joins IoT Platform Market
Everybody wants into the IoT act. Hitachi announced that it is “accelerating [its] already sizable IoT business.” The company did $5B in IoT-related revenue in 2015 and has 33 solutions in market in areas including public safety and smart city, renewable and sustainable energy, intelligent transportation, precision agriculture and manufacturing, water treatment and building systems, and more. Hitachi will work with AT&T, Eurotech, Microsoft, PTC and SAP on joint solutions for customers.
It also announced “Lumada”—an enterprise-grade IoT platform. “Lumada offers an open architecture and comprehensive framework of key IoT solution building blocks, including edge device and connectivity integration, application integration, data repositories, stream and batch data processing, advanced analytics and tools, solution cores and enterprise services. This is as close as I could find to what the “platform” really is. I suspect a hardware device with embedded capabilities. I’ve asked Hitachi that if someone orders a Lumada what is delivered. If I get an answer that isn’t vague like the press release and the Website, I’ll update.
First, Hitachi announced the formation of Hitachi Insight Group. Headquartered in Santa Clara, CA, the new group will drive Hitachi’s unified Internet of Things (IoT) business and go-to-market (GTM) strategy worldwide.
“The newly formed Hitachi Insight Group will be the ‘tip of the spear’ in Hitachi’s quest to capture market share in what IDC projects to be a $1.46 trillion market opportunity by 2020.”
“The greatest opportunity for IoT lies in the enterprise, industrial and public sector markets, which stand to benefit significantly from digital transformation. Although the market is still nascent, digitalization is already disrupting traditional product-based business models, driving demand for solutions and an everything-as-a-service approach,” said Vernon Turner, senior vice president, enterprise systems and IoT research fellow at IDC.
Not at a loss for self-confidence, the release states, “With today’s announcements, Hitachi is making good progress toward positioning itself to be one of the few likely IoT powerhouses as the market shakes out.”
The global team consists of more than 16,000 employees including some from Hitachi Consulting and Hitachi Data Systems.
Core IoT Platform
Lumada is the name of the new core platform. “It” has an open, adaptable software architecture—integrating proven commercial technologies from across Hitachi’s portfolio. Lumada is a comprehensive, enterprise-grade IoT core platform with an open and adaptable architecture that simplifies IoT solution creation and customization. It incorporates expertise in operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT), blending powerful and proven data orchestration, streaming analytics, content intelligence, simulation models, and other Hitachi software technologies.
The platform will serve as the core foundation on which all of Hitachi’s IoT solutions are built and will enable the creation of IoT business ecosystems.
