The Art of Information

“The journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step.” Throughout my life and professional career, this quote from the Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu has been a constant inspiration. When I joined HDS about 8 months ago, I embarked on a new journey - today both HDS and me take a giant step forward with the unveiling of a new visual identity, messaging and branding campaign. Additionally, we’re sharing with our customers and the industry, our new vision for IT and business that honors both Hitachi’s 100-year anniversary and our customer’s most valuable asset - their data and information. Why? Because Data Drives our World - and Information is the New Currency.

Data Drives our World - and Information is the New Currency

Though I have held the somewhat vague title of “Strategic Marketing Principal” since joining HDS when asked “so, what do you DO?”, I usually say, “I’m the chief story-teller.” My primary charter these past 6-8 months has been to create a retelling of the HDS story, and by extension, our mission and promise to our customers. Fortunately, I had a lot of innovate technologies, rock-solid products, and cost-effective and powerful solutions to work with. Being a 14-year veteran of the storage industry, I’ve competed against and collaborated with HDS in the past during my days at other vendors and as an analyst. Throughout those years my take on HDS has been fairly consistent - “HDS has the best technology in the industry, they just don’t know how to talk about it.”

I still believe HDS has the best technology in the industry, and that isn’t going to change simply because we’re unveiling a new vision and spending a little bit of money on marketing. HDS never has and probably never will spend as much of our revenue on marketing as our competitors do to buy their customer’s favor (and their POs) or sponsor over-priced seats at baseball games. Companies and governments of all sizes trust HDS to manage, protect and archive their most valuable assets - their data and information - and that is what will continue to drive our technology, product and solutions roadmaps forward. What we are doing is elevating our message and describing our products and solutions and why they matter to a more business-centric audience. Leading with, “Let me tell you what our products and solutions can do for your business”, rather than “Let me tell you why a 15,000 RPM drive is better than a 10,000 RPM drive.”

Are we abandoning the storage admins, Directors and VPs of Infrastructure or CIOs who we have traditionally sold to and who champion our products? Absolutely not. Will HDS continue to develop and deliver the most innovative, reliable and cost-effective storage products and solutions in the industry? Yes we will. In fact, our new vision is anchored by a set of enabling technologies which HDS is uniquely capable of delivering, in addition to something many of Hitachi Ltd’s business units combine to deliver. These “pillars” of our new vision for IT and business are Virtualization (beyond just storage), Automation, Cloud-readiness, and Sustainability. Expect much more on these and how HDS and Hitachi leverage our diverse portfolio of technologies, products, and solutions to solve customer’s challenges, both today and for the long-term.

However as every industry is transformed by the information age and the reliance on IT becomes greater, Executives and board members want to know that the investments they’re making in those technologies will help them accomplish their business goals. So in a way, we’ll be spending more time telling our customers WHAT our products and solutions do for their business and less time talking about the underlying technologies, features or functions. Again, this is not a “zero sum” game, we’re not abandoning our roots, and any competitor who simply says, “Oh, HDS is just putting lipstick on a pig,” is being hypocritical and disingenuous. HDS has the smallest marketing budget and we’re a market leader, thanks to our customers and our engineers.

Today, both HDS and me (along with the many individuals and teams who worked tirelessly to help bring our new visual identity, messaging and branding campaign to life - THANK YOU ALL!) are taking a very important and big step forward - unveiling a new visual identity, messaging and branding campaign, and redefining our vision for where our customers and their business are headed - and, of course, how HDS is uniquely positioned to help them achieve their goals, lower their costs, and remain agile and flexible in the face of economic, competitive, or market uncertainties.

This is merely the next step forward in our long journey, and our customer’s journey - to get the most out of their IT and storage infrastructures so they can extract maximum value with minimum cost and risk from their data and information assets. That’s the business we’re in. Play ball!