The Power of Distributed Infrastructure and Storage at the Edge

Enterprises are facing one of the most significant infrastructure pivots in a decade. Between rising AI adoption, escalating data‑sovereignty requirements, and the industry‑wide shift away from legacy virtualization stacks, organizations are under pressure to move faster—without compromising resilience, control, or budget.

Recent industry data underscores this urgency. Analysts report that hybrid cloud is the preferred model for responding to an increasingly strong risk and governance landscape, driven by performance, compliance, and cost optimization needs. And with IT leaders expecting to increase AI investment by 70% over the next two years, enterprises must modernize both compute and data platforms to stay competitive.

This dynamic is accelerating the move toward solutions that bring cloud‑consistent operations directly to customer data centers and edge locations. That’s exactly why Microsoft recently announced that Azure Local is available with SAN support on validated hardware from Hitachi Vantara, powered by Virtual Storage Platform One (VSP One). It introduces Hitachi Vantara as a trusted, enterprise-grade infrastructure and storage partner for Azure Local.

Benefits of Distributed Infrastructure and Storage at the Edge

Why is this shift in the industry happening? Below, find a few reasons why organizations are motivated to move toward the combination of distributed infrastructure and storage at the edge:

1. Modernize virtualization without disruption. Move off legacy hypervisors smoothly with no‑forklift migration and familiar SAN‑based operations.
2. Run consistent operations everywhere. Manage core, edge, and cloud through a unified control plane.
3. Lower IT costs with smart workload placement. Optimize spend by placing workloads where they perform best and cost least—edge, data center, or infrastructure.
4. Scale fast, from data center to edge. Add capacity or sites quickly with data platform predictability, performance, and linear scalability.
5. Simplify day‑to‑day management. Reduce operational overhead with automated deployment and lifecycle management
6. Meet strict data residency & compliance requirements. Keep sensitive workloads on‑prem while maintaining cloud‑consistent control and built‑in encryption.
7. Strengthen security & uptime. Achieve eight‑nines availability and integrated cyber‑resilience—no third‑party add‑ons required.
8. Reduce power, space & cooling needs. Improve sustainability and efficiency with compact, energy‑efficient architecture.
9. Accelerate hybrid cloud adoption. Seamlessly integrate on‑prem workloads with data services and modern app platforms
10. Run high‑performance AI anywhere. Support GPU‑accelerated AI for secure, high‑speed AI at the edge or in your data center.

Real-World Outcomes Across Industries

The flexibility of this kind of solution allows enterprises to modernize at their own pace—whether a cloud‑managed or a self‑managed deployment. Across industries like financial services, healthcare, telecommunications, and government, organizations are adopting distributed infrastructure and storage to:

• Address data sovereignty and compliance: Healthcare data is among the most sensitive data types, governed by regulations such as HIPAA, HITECH, GDPR, and regional health data laws. Distributed infrastructure enables patient records, imaging data, and clinical systems to remain within approved facilities or jurisdictions while still supporting hybrid cloud analytics, interoperability, and collaboration.
• Modernize virtualization at lower cost: Network functions—such as core routing, packet gateways, and subscriber services—have increasingly moved from proprietary hardware to virtualized network functions (VNFs). Distributed platforms modernize virtualization for telecom workloads, reducing hardware dependence, lowering operational costs, and improving scalability while maintaining carrier‑grade reliability.
• Accelerate AI adoption with high‑performance data platforms: Fraud detection and credit risk modeling are becoming increasingly AI‑driven. Banks can deploy high‑performance distributed storage and compute to feed massive transaction streams into real‑time models. Data scientists train AI models on historical data in centralized environments, while inference runs closer to live transaction systems for low latency decisions—approving payments, flagging anomalies, or triggering step‑up authentication in milliseconds.
• Deploy distributed, resilient edge environments: Many government missions operate in disconnected, degraded, or intermittent connectivity environments like field offices, emergency response zones, transportation hubs, military bases, and border locations. Distributed edge infrastructure ensures local systems remain operational and resilient, synchronizing data when connectivity is restored.
• Unify VM and container operations under a common hybrid cloud model: Legacy clinical applications run on VMs, while newer digital health services, patient portals, and interoperability services increasingly use containers. A unified hybrid cloud platform allows IT teams to manage both application models consistently.
• Enable the right workloads: Different healthcare workloads have different requirements. Latency‑sensitive clinical systems stay close to care delivery locations, while analytics, research workloads, collaboration tools, and non‑PHI services can scale into approved cloud environments.
• Support for AI/ML, GPU acceleration, and edge processing: From computer vision for transportation and public safety to predictive analytics for infrastructure maintenance, modern government applications demand GPU acceleration and local processing. Distributed platforms support AI/ML across core data centers and edge locations, ensuring low latency and mission resilience.

A Modern, Enterprise-Grade Experience—Anywhere

Hitachi Vantara’s Integrated Solutions (HIS) with Microsoft Azure gives enterprises a seamless, cloud‑managed or on‑premises alternative to legacy virtualization—without sacrificing performance, reliability, or control. It’s Hitachi Vantara’s Integrated Solutions framework for delivering validated, Microsoft‑ready hybrid cloud infrastructures that combine:

• Microsoft platforms like Azure Arc, Azure Local, and Windows Server (Hyper‑V / WSFC)
• Hitachi infrastructure like VSP One Block (SAN – on-prem) / VSP One SDS Cloud (SAN – cloud) and Hitachi Advanced Server (compute)
• Hitachi solution intellectual properties like Reference Architectures (RA); certified hardware stacks and best practices; and automation, lifecycle, and integration patterns

The solution offers a seamless VMware alternative with the ability to choose between Azure Local’s cloud-managed control plane or an independent WSFC model—while retaining trusted SAN data services and disaster recovery. It also offers no‑forklift migration, using external SAN attach for low‑risk modernization.

Relying on Hitachi Vantara solutions also means business can expert certified performance, including sub‑millisecond latency, eight‑nines availability, 4:1 data reduction and a 100% data availability guarantee. When it comes to AI and hybrid‑cloud readiness, Hitachi Vantara also offers support for AKS, GPU workloads, and consistent operations from core to edge.

This sets the stage for a consistent, compliant, cloud‑like operating model across data center, distributed edge, and regulated environments.

Discover how Hitachi Vantara and Microsoft Azure Local can help you modernize your hybrid cloud and accelerate digital innovation.