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Bloomberg reports Japanese multi-national conglomerate Hitachi Ltd. is aiming to sell off its Hitachi Vantara data storage subsidiary for up to ¥200 billion ($1.3 billion).
Hitachi hired a sale advisor and distributed description material about its Hitachi Vantara business to interested parties, with a private equity concern suggested as a likely type of buyer, the story says. We’re told the company wants to focus on higher margin (more profitable) businesses than Hitachi Vantara, such as energy transmission and digital transformation initiatives (e.g., Hitachi Energy’s SaaS offerings).
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The current range of Hitachi Ltd. business interests include energy (nuclear and other power generation and transmission), mobility (trains and automotive systems), industry (manufacturing and industrial equipment), measurement and analytical systems, health care, building systems (elevators and escalators) as well as many digital solutions businesses (control, IoT, social infrastructure). Then there’s data storage and management, which includes Hitachi Vantara.
There are two nominally separate Hitachi Vantara business: Hitachi Vantara Ltd. in Japan and Hitachi Vantara LLC in the USA. Hitachi’s fy2025 revenues included ¥475 billion from its IT Products unit, up 7 percent Y/Y, with storage revenues included in that total. The IT Products EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization) was 4.4 percent, vs 14.8 percent for the parent Digital Systems and Services business.
The combined Hitachi Vantara businesses’ annual sales revenues are said by Westgrove Research to be ¥300 billion ($1.95 billion).
Hitachi Vantara’s roots go back to 1989 when Hitachi and EDS acquired National Advanced Systems from National Semiconductor and named the mainframe storage-focused business Hitachi Data Systems (HDS). Hitachi bought out EDS in 1999. HDS moved into general enterprise storage in the early 2000s with high-end Lightning and mid-range Thunder arrays. It built up a well-regarded high-end storage business throughout the early 2010s. In 2017 Hitachi merged HDS with its acquired Pentaho data analytics business and its IoT-focussed Hitachi Insight Group, calling the combined business Hitachi Vantara.
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Hitachi Vantara’s Virtual Storage Platform One (VSP One) enterprise-class storage arrays have a fine reputation for reliability and are rated highly, for example, by GigaOm.
There were acquisition-led forays into the file (NAS) and object product areas in the past, but it wouldn’t be too unkind to assess the results as also-ran products and business units. It has also largely missed out on supplying storage for AI training, not being one of Nvidia’s main storage partners.
In general, our belief is that Hitachi Vantara has not been able to parlay its enterprise, monolithic, high-end storage array business into general, mid-range, dual-controller success, like NetApp. It tried its hand at all-flash arrays, developing its own drive hardware, but abandoned that as commodity SSDs improved and competitors using Israeli-developed tech, like Dell’s EMC business, accelerated past it.
Hitachi Consulting was added to Hitachi Vantara in 2020. The overall result was a mess, with a somewhat lackluster period up to 2023. Then Hitachi Ltd. spun off the services business, and new CEO Sheila Rohra, appointed in mid-2023, set about revitalizing the business. She hired new execs, such as CFO Tony Gonella from Palo Alto, and Chief Product Officer Octavian Tanase from NetApp. New products were announced with a strategy of an overall VSP One brand for block, file and object products plus support for public cloud storage. And then this, which rather takes the wind out of its sales
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Our understanding is that Hitachi Vantara is continuing its normal business operations. We asked the company to comment, and a spokesperson told us: “Hitachi Vantura cannot comment on market rumours or speculation. The company is focused on business as usual and enhancing corporate value across the portfolio.”
There is a thread about the potential sale on The Layoff.com.
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We might assess a general Hitachi Vantara weakness as its subjugation under Hitachi Ltd in Japan, which parachuted in a succession of Japanese Hitachi senior leaders, diluting the influence of the possibly more entrepreneurial and Silicon Valley-connected US leaders. A similar lack of general storage industry success has bedevilled fellow Japanese conglomerates Fujitsu and NEC.
