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Three-Year, Multi-Billion Dollar Strategic Partnership Focus on creating Transformative, innovative industry solutions For business and society.
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Hitachi Group will incorporate Microsoft Cloud, Azure Open AI Service, Dynamics 365, Copilot for Microsoft 365, and GitHub Copilot into its Lumada solutions. The goal is to accelerate the growth of the Lumada business and improve the productivity of its 270,000 employees.
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Hitachi is 50,000 “GenAI Professionals” Microsoft has been selected as a partner of Hitachi's AI talent development program, the AI Alliance.
Redmond, Wash. and Tokyo, June 4, 2024–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501) and Microsoft announced plans for a multi-billion-dollar collaboration over the next three years to accelerate social innovation through generative AI. The strategic alliance will help Hitachi drive growth in its Lumada business, with projected sales of 2.65 trillion yen ($18.9 billion).*1 The plan is to promote business efficiency and productivity improvements for approximately 270,000 Hitachi Group employees by fiscal 2024.
Specifically, Hitachi will incorporate Microsoft's cloud, Azure Open AI Service, Dynamics 365, Copilot for Microsoft 365, and GitHub Copilot into its Lumada solutions to provide innovative solutions for industries such as energy and mobility, contributing to the development of companies and society. In addition, the two companies will promote joint projects to meet urgent business needs, such as strengthening cloud services, which are attracting attention as the use of generative AI expands, strengthening security, and reducing the environmental impact of data centers.
“Hitachi is investing 300 billion yen ($2.1 billion) as it transforms by applying AI across the Hitachi Group to improve productivity.*1 Hitachi and Microsoft will join GenAI to capture new growth opportunities in fiscal year 2024. Hitachi and Microsoft are already working on various co-creation projects, including the development of next-generation digital solutions in the manufacturing and logistics fields.*2“Developing a field-extended metaverse that runs on Microsoft Teams” “We are pleased to be working with Hitachi on this important milestone,” said Keiji Kojima, president and CEO of Hitachi. “I am pleased that through this new agreement, we will be able to expand our efforts into social infrastructure fields such as energy and mobility, and by applying generative AI, we will work to improve on-site productivity, which will become increasingly important in the future, and further accelerate social innovation. By combining the strengths of our two companies, we will contribute to solving the challenges faced by our customers and society, and contribute to the realization of a more sustainable future.”
“We are ushering in a new era of AI with its promise to deliver transformative business outcomes across every role and industry.” “Microsoft is committed to delivering on this vision and is committed to helping our customers achieve their business goals,” said Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO, Microsoft. “Our expanded partnership with Hitachi brings together the power of the Microsoft Cloud, including Microsoft Copilot, with Hitachi's industry expertise to improve productivity for Hitachi's 270,000 employees and help solve our customers' biggest challenges, including sustainability.”
Hitachi Business Transformation
Hitachi's Generative AI Center*3 Hitachi and Microsoft will collaborate to improve operational efficiency and application development within the Hitachi Group by utilizing Copilot for Microsoft 365 and GitHub Copilot. Hitachi will also utilize Azure OpenAI Service to enhance customer service. As part of Hitachi's group-wide transformation, Hitachi will combine Azure OpenAI Service and GitHub Copilot with Hitachi's system development expertise to maintain high quality and improve productivity in mission-critical system development. Hitachi's internal verification confirmed that by combining Hitachi's detailed system design knowledge with Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and GitHub Copilot, application source code can be generated correctly 70-90% of the time, resulting in high-quality output.*Four
Hitachi Rail is using GenAI for predictive maintenance to enhance asset monitoring and improve forecast accuracy. This proactive approach helps prevent breakdowns, improve service quality, reduce operational costs, and increase safety. For example, Hitachi Rail has leveraged Microsoft Azure's cloud-based platform to streamline data visualization and analysis, providing AI-driven data-driven insights to digitally monitor rail infrastructure. These insights can be used to: Network Rail, Enhance predictive maintenance decision-making for overhead lines.
Develop innovative digital solutions
Hitachi is strengthening its Lumada solutions by incorporating generative AI functions. As part of this, the company has already begun offering Microsoft's “generative AI” to “JP1 Cloud Services,” a SaaS version of the integrated operations management software “JP1,” which has approximately 20,000 customers. This will improve the operational efficiency of IT departments, financial institutions, public institutions, and other organizations and shorten the time it takes to respond to incidents. In-house demonstration experiments conducted so far have confirmed that generative AI responds to alerts and displays sources such as manuals that serve as the basis for the response, thereby reducing the time it takes for operators to initially respond to alerts by approximately two-thirds.
In addition to this, Hitachi and Microsoft will also support the energy transition by improving access to and enhancing digital solutions for asset performance management, energy trading and risk management, reducing downtime and increasing profitability. Increased computing power and cloud infrastructure are essential to scaling these applications. Hitachi Energy's enterprise software solution technologies and partnership with Microsoft will be key to optimizing energy networks from generation to transmission and distribution, ultimately providing customers with reliable and sustainable energy.
Collaborative projects to promote sustainable growth
Hitachi group companies, including GlobalLogic, Hitachi Digital Services and Hitachi Solutions, offer a wide range of digital engineering, IT and managed services and application services for the cloud, and further development efforts through this partnership will be focused on enhancing this wide range of services with the aim of sustainable innovation with Microsoft.
As the impact of CO2 emissions from AI on the global environment increases, Hitachi and Microsoft will work together to achieve zero carbon to reduce the environmental burden, starting with the European datacenter project.
Strengthening digital skills and workforce development
Hitachi will train more than 50,000 GenAI professionals. Through this partnership, Hitachi will incorporate training programs to acquire advanced software development skills using GitHub Copilot and Azure OpenAI Service, and will train “GenAI professionals” who will support customers' transformation using AI.
About Hitachi
Hitachi is promoting the Social Innovation Business, which realizes a sustainable society by utilizing data and technology. We solve customer and social issues through Lumada solutions that utilize IT, OT (Operational Technology), and products. Hitachi operates in three business sectors: “Digital Systems & Services,” which supports customers' digital transformation; “Green Energy & Mobility,” which contributes to a decarbonized society through energy and railway systems; and “Connected Industries,” which connects products with digital technology and provides solutions to various industries. We aim to grow through collaboration with customers by making full use of digital, green, and innovation. In fiscal year 2023 (ending March 31, 2024), Hitachi's sales revenue in the three sectors was 8,564.3 billion yen, the number of consolidated subsidiaries was 573, and the number of employees was approximately 270,000 worldwide. For more information about Hitachi, please visit https://www.hitachi.com.
About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) develops AI-powered platforms and tools to deliver innovative solutions to meet customer's evolving needs. The technology company is driven by a mission to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more, and is working to make AI responsible and accessible.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240603649131/en/
contact address
Media Contact
Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 638-7777,
email address
Hitachi, Ltd. Digital Systems & Services Corporate Communications Department
koho@itg.hitachi.co.jp
