Empowering Enterprises with Data and AI: Insights from Sanjay Agrawal, CTO and Head Presales at Hitachi Vantara, India and SAARC – IT Voice | IT in Depth

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6 mins read

Empowering Enterprises with Data and AI: Insights from Sanjay Agrawal, CTO and Head Presales at Hitachi Vantara, India and SAARC

IT Voice:  Today’s enterprises increasingly rely on data to drive decisions and growth. With data volumes surging and demands intensifying, why have cost-effective, high-performance data solutions become such a priority for businesses now?

Sanjay Agrawal – Every organisation today is inundated with a huge amount of data, as data has become a crucial driver of business strategy, innovation, and competitive advantage. With data volumes skyrocketing due to trends like IoT, AI, and digital transformation, businesses now need solutions that not only manage data efficiently but also unlock insights quickly. This is why cost-effective, high-performance data solutions are increasingly critical—they allow organizations to harness the full power of their data without inflating operational costs.

One primary reason for this shift is that organizations are under pressure to do more with less. Enterprises are looking to achieve high performance while data demands are growing, necessitating a smarter approach to storage and analytics. By automating data placement, optimizing storage tiers, and leveraging AI for predictive analytics, organisations can minimize resource usage and maximize ROI.

A strong data foundation is required for good outcomes for AI for example for accelerated digital transformation so that focus can be shifted from data management to data innovation and eventually data monetization. Data should be easily searchable, discoverable, ready for analytics, real-time decision making and ensuring speedy data feed for machine learning and deep learning etc. 

IT Voice –  What makes India a key market for Hitachi Vantara?

Sanjay Agrawal – India plays a key role for Hitachi Vantara, serving as both a critical market and a strategic global operations hub. Domestically, we collaborate with a wide ecosystem of partners and directly engage with customers to deliver solutions tailored to their needs. Our India team is instrumental in deploying, implementing, and managing these solutions throughout their lifecycle.

Globally, India is a powerhouse for innovation and service delivery. Our Global Delivery Center in Hyderabad provides services to a vast array of international clients. Additionally, our engineering, product development, and software testing hubs in cities like Bangalore, Pune, and Kolkata contribute directly to the development of cutting-edge technologies. Beyond this, our finance back office and IT services teams in India are pivotal to Hitachi Vantara’s global operations. This robust presence positions India as a key driver of our success, both locally and internationally.

IT Voice – Hitachi Vantara’s Virtual Storage Platform One (VSP One): How does Hitachi Vantara’s Virtual Storage Platform One support enterprises in efficiently managing data and achieving their operational goals?

Sanjay Agrawal – Hitachi Vantara’s Virtual Storage Platform One (VSP One) is a visionary unified approach  with a single data plane, control plane, and data fabric across Edge, Core and Cloud including various storage types and environments – all managed by a single AI-enabled software stack. The solution addresses the critical challenges of data silos, fragmentation, security concerns, and potential reputation damage by introducing a strong data foundation that serves as the bedrock for building a more intelligent, efficient and competitive organization. VSP One helps bring easy management and higher efficiency for data management when keeping the lights. 

As data becomes integral to every aspect of business—from decision-making to customer engagement, VSP One solutions provides a scalable, high-performance storage solution that adapts to evolving enterprise needs. It is engineered to support enterprises in effectively managing their data and achieving operational excellence.

In addition, VSP One offers flexible scalability, allowing enterprises to expand their storage capabilities seamlessly as data volumes grow. This agility enables businesses to handle data surges without disruption, supporting both their immediate and long-term operational goals.

With VSP One, Hitachi Vantara aims to empower enterprises with a solution that not only meets today’s data demands but also sets them up for future success by transforming data into a strategic asset. Essentially VSP One helps create a strong data foundation for innovation. 

IT Voice- Benefit of one data platform with VSP One: What gives Hitachi Vantara a competitive edge over others? 

Sanjay Agrawal  -In today’s data-driven world, businesses face increasing challenges in managing their storage needs. The sheer complexity of handling data across various environments—be it structured or unstructured, in block, file, or object storage—can be overwhelming. Compounding this is the ever-growing volume of data businesses generate and store, which demands solutions that are both scalable and reliable.

A unified data platform such as VSP One offers a strategic answer to these challenges. By eliminating infrastructure silos, it simplifies data management, enabling businesses to access and consume their data seamlessly, whenever and wherever it’s needed. Additionally, such a platform ensures high availability and fault tolerance, providing the reliability enterprises require for uninterrupted operations. This approach not only streamlines storage but also empowers businesses to unlock the full potential of their data assets in a complex digital landscape.

VSP One is built with resilience at its core, providing enterprises with an ‘unbreakable’ foundation for data management. In today’s digital landscape, where data availability and uptime are mission-critical, VSP One delivers continuous reliability through a suite of advanced features and technologies designed to safeguard data integrity and support business continuity.

With VSP One, Hitachi Vantara delivers a platform that not only resists failures but also adapts to emerging threats and challenges, providing a dependable, resilient foundation that meets the rigorous demands of modern enterprises. This resilience enables organizations to stay focused on innovation and growth, confident that their data infrastructure is both robust and future-proof.

 IT Voice- What are the biggest hurdles enterprises face in AI adoption, and how can hybrid cloud address these challenges? 

Sanjay Agrawal –One of the most common challenges we see is what I call the “data bottleneck.” AI thrives on data, but many organizations struggle with fragmented, unstructured, or poorly managed data. Without a strong data foundation, even the most advanced AI models can’t deliver meaningful insights.

This is where hybrid cloud becomes a game-changer. It gives businesses the flexibility to store and process data where it makes the most sense—whether that’s in the cloud for scalability or on-premises for control and compliance. For instance, sensitive financial or healthcare data might need to stay on-premises for regulatory reasons, but analytical workloads that require massive compute power can be offloaded to the cloud.

Another hurdle is cost. Running AI experiments entirely in the cloud can get expensive fast. Hybrid cloud lets organizations balance costs by using on-premises infrastructure for predictable workloads while tapping into the cloud only for the high-power, short-term needs—like training large models.

Lastly, there’s a talent gap. Many organizations don’t have in-house expertise to operationalize AI. At Hitachi Vantara, we help bridge that gap with advisory services and pre-built AI solutions that integrate seamlessly into existing systems, making adoption smoother and faster.

IT Voice – Support for Digital Transformation: How is Hitachi Vantara enabling customers to adopt AI despite its perceived challenges?

Sanjay Agrawal -While AI is still evolving, the reality is that businesses cannot afford to overlook it. AI and GenAI are no longer optional; they’re becoming integral to operations across industries. At Hitachi Vantara, we embed AI in our own solutions—whether in storage products to optimize utilization or in our internal operations to enhance efficiency and agility.

For our customers, we focus on simplifying AI adoption by offering engineered solutions that address their specific needs. Many of them are already working on AI projects, even if they’re at an exploratory stage. The buzz around AI has created a sense of inevitability—organizations understand that adopting AI is essential to remain competitive. We help them navigate this journey by providing practical, impactful AI solutions tailored to their industries.

One of the roadblocks for AI adoption is around data and as mentioned earlier, we additionally provide strong data foundation to solve many of the data related challenges so that enterprise can accelerate AI adoption without worrying too much on data challenges. 

IT Voice- Can you share industry-specific examples where hybrid cloud has unlocked transformative AI applications?

Sanjay Agrawal- One example that stands out is in manufacturing. Many of our clients are leveraging hybrid cloud to optimize production processes. For instance, they use on-premises AI systems to monitor real-time equipment telemetry—things like vibration or temperature data from machines. This helps them predict failures before they happen. At the same time, the cloud is used to analyze historical data trends, allowing them to fine-tune processes and improve efficiency.

In the rail industry, hybrid cloud has helped revolutionize safety systems. We work with clients to use on-prem AI for real-time monitoring of track conditions and rail health. Meanwhile, the cloud aggregates data from multiple networks to spot patterns and improve long-term safety strategies.

Even in financial services, hybrid cloud plays a critical role. Think about risk analysis. Sensitive data stays on-prem to ensure compliance, but the cloud powers advanced analytics like scenario simulations or stress testing. This hybrid model is key to balancing security with innovation.

IT Voice -Future: What is your vision for the hybrid cloud’s role in shaping AI adoption by 2030?

Sanjay Agrawal By 2030, I believe hybrid cloud will be the standard, not the exception, for AI-driven enterprises. Why? Because businesses will demand more flexibility than ever before. AI use cases are becoming more diverse, from real-time applications at the edge to massive data training in the cloud. A one-size-fits-all approach simply won’t work.

Our vision at Hitachi Vantara is to create a seamless hybrid experience—what we call a “unified data fabric.” This means customers can access their data and run AI workloads anywhere, without worrying about where their data lives. Whether it’s at the edge, on-premises, or in the cloud, everything works together as one integrated system.

We also see sustainability becoming a major driver. Hybrid cloud enables organizations to use resources more efficiently, reducing energy consumption by shifting workloads to greener environments when possible. By 2030, the hybrid cloud won’t just support AI—it will make AI more accessible, sustainable, and impactful.

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