Datacom Named Partner of the Year at Hitachi Data Systems ANZ Partner Awards

Noosa – October 28, 2015 – Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), today named Datacom, Partner of the Year at its ANZ Partner Awards. The Awards coincide with the company’s annual ANZ Partner Summit taking place in Noosa October 27-29. The Summit brings together HDS’ key partners in Australia and New Zealand.

HDS Partner Awards recognise the highest achieving partners who demonstrated strong revenue growth and a commitment to delivering innovative solutions in collaboration with HDS. The four partners recognised at the HDS Partner Awards this year are:

• Partner of the Year: Datacom
• New Partner of the Year: Insync
• Solution Partner of the Year: Global Storage
• Regional Partner of the Year: Perfekt

These top performing partners reflect the power of the growing HDS channel community. Just last year HDS signed 21 new partnerships, while the overall revenue through ANZ Partners increased by more than 30 per cent year-on-year. The key growth areas for HDS and its partners include a range of horizontal and vertical markets industries such as government, healthcare, education, telecom, banking and financial services.

“The tremendous growth our channel community experienced in 2015 is a testament to our mutually beneficial partnerships. Hitachi Data Systems is well-positioned to help the partner community transition to solutions focus through our transformation from a data storage provider into an information solutions company,” said Nathan McGregor, vice president and country manager, Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Islands. “We’re pleased to recognise this year’s winners and bring our partner community together at the ANZ Partner Summit. The Summit is vital to ensuring we continue to solve our customers’ business problems with bold solutions that go above and beyond the industry standard.”

HDS has also recently introduced a number of new and enhanced solutions within its Social Innovation portfolio that offer further growth potential for its partners. The solutions combine operational technology and information technology to address critical business and societal challenges through the application of the Internet of Things, machine-to-machine and big-data analytics, and the embedded expertise of the Hitachi family of companies. The solutions are designed to support a variety of industries, ranging from public safety, intelligent transportation and smart city infrastructures, to IT operations, healthcare and telecommunications. Hitachi uniquely offers the abundant resources, leading technologies and expansive domain expertise to help organizations address real-world challenges through data innovation and accomplish more in the areas that matter most.

“Partners play a crucial role in delivering on the full potential of our Internet of Things and big-data-based solutions in customer environments,” said McGregor.

“HDS’ growing commitment to its relationships with the channel in Australia and New Zealand has been underpinned by our TrueNorth Partner Program. The program enables our partner community to address the changing market and customer dynamics by evolving from a traditional product-based reselling approach to an approach that accommodates current and new business partners in selling solutions. These solutions support our customers’ requirements and let them acquire our solutions via either capex or opex consumption models. The program allows us to grow our channel ecosystem, supporting a broad range of partners from resellers and systems integrators through to cloud and services providers and industry specialists,” said Phillip Teague, director, Industry and Alliance Solutions in Australia and New Zealand, HDS.

The HDS Partner Awards winners are part of the Hitachi TrueNorth Partner Program, which is designed to support HDS’ partners with advanced training options and state-of-the-art solution guides, and to offer an accessible and simple business model for partners to generate solutions-based opportunities, among other exclusive benefits. The TrueNorth Partner Program has been a success in ANZ since its relaunch 18 months ago, with more than 90 per cent of HDS’ Gold and Platinum partners now being rewarded with the associated program benefits.

To learn about the TrueNorth Partner Program, visit
https://www.hds.com/partners/truenorth-partners/.

About Hitachi Data Systems
Hitachi Data Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., builds information management and Social Innovation solutions that help businesses succeed and societies be safer, healthier and smarter. We focus on big data that offers real value – what we call the Internet of Things that matter. Our IT infrastructure, analytics, content and cloud solutions and services drive strategic management and analysis of the world’s data. Only Hitachi Data Systems integrates the best information technology and operational technology from across the Hitachi family of companies to deliver the exceptional insight that business and society need to transform and thrive. Visit us at https://www.hds.com/anz/.

About Hitachi, Ltd.
Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, delivers innovations that answer society’s challenges with our talented team and proven experience in global markets. The company’s consolidated revenues for fiscal 2014 (ended March 31, 2015) totaled 9,761 billion yen ($81.3 billion). Hitachi is focusing more than ever on the Social Innovation Business, which includes power & infrastructure systems, information & telecommunication systems, construction machinery, high functional materials & components, automotive systems, healthcare and others. For more information, please visit the company's website at http://www.hitachi.com.

Press Contact:
Hitachi Data Systems
Natasha David
+61 2 9325 3300
natasha.david@hds.com

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