There’s No Solitude in Sustainability

Tom Christensen
Global Technology Advisor & Executive Analyst, Hitachi Vantara

September 26, 2022

With all the attention, the warnings, and the calls to action to go green, we might be forgiven for not remembering that sustainability is not a core competency of most businesses.

Setting out to lower carbon emissions, procure and leverage sustainable products and services, becoming climate conscious about supply chains, and driving toward a more circular business; these things take time and commitment to research, strategize, execute, and perfect. Unfortunately, of course, time is now as precious as the environment itself. And going it alone is simply not an option.

What’s needed in the fight against climate change are allies and partners; people with expertise that an organization may lack; people who can assess and find areas of opportunity to meet sustainability goals while augmenting and improving the performance of the business.

Assisting organizations in this way is what Hitachi and its many subsidiaries, like Hitachi Vantara, have been doing for customers across industries for years – especially in the area of sustainability. As Hitachi itself works toward a myriad of internal sustainability goals, not the least of which is for it and its subsidiaries to be 100% carbon neutral by 2030, and to drive carbon neutrality across its entire supply chain by 2050, it is steadfastly helping customers achieve their own green goals.

In 2018, Stena Line, one of the largest shipping companies in Europe, turned to Hitachi for an AI solution to help improve ship fuel efficiency. With large container ships emitting as much carbon as 50 million cars, the move was becoming an imperative. The solution developed is designed to help the company predict things like the most fuel-efficient way to operate a certain vessel on a specific route, and based on a range of variables, such as currents, weather conditions, shallow water, and speed through water.

That same year, Hitachi Vantara was brought in to assist with a new industry-led, Network Innovation Competition-funded project called Optimise Prime in the U.K. The group’s work is dedicated to investigating the effects of commercial electric vehicles (EVs) on the electricity distribution network there. Specifically, it sought to understand and minimize the impact that widespread electrification of commercial vehicles will have on distribution networks across the country. Through new technical and commercial solutions, Optimize Prime aims to lower customer costs and enable a faster, smoother transition to electric for commercial fleets and private-hire vehicle operators alike.

As the list of work goes on among Hitachi Vantara and its sister companies, the awareness grows. This summer, the Everest Group ranked Hitachi Vantara as “Major Contender” in its inaugural Sustainability Enablement Technology Services PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2022.

But in this new era of extremes – from weather patterns and rising regulation, to burgeoning new alternative energy industries – such recognition says as much about the overall need and value of partnership than it does about our company’s hard work.

Tom Christensen

Tom has +30 years' experience in data center modernization, from compute and data infrastructure to hybrid and multicloud, applications, DataOps and big data analytics. He writes extensively about technology and advocates for sustainability and social innovation.