South West Water leads wave of change in water industry, chooses Hitachi Consulting to control the flow of data in its networks

London, UK – October 03, 2016 – Hitachi Consulting, a leading provider of IoT analytics solutions, technology consulting and managed services, is delighted to announce a new strategic supplier relationship with South West Water Limited, the provider of water and wastewater services to homes and businesses in Devon and Cornwall and parts of Dorset and Somerset. The two companies will work together over the next three years to bring the power of near real-time analytics to South West Water and make company processes more agile.

The level of change taking place across the water industry in the current asset management period, AMP6, provides companies with great opportunities to improve their proposition for customers and stakeholders, and South West Water has a strong focus on delivering sustainable improvements across the company.

Hitachi Consulting will deliver a range of IoT solutions combining operational technology, including Supervisory Control and Data Access (SCADA)  and telemetry data  with enterprise IT information. This will enable South West Water to make faster, more informed decisions to improve customer service, predict operational performance, deploy maintenance solutions more effectively and comply with industry regulation.

“We collect huge volumes of data on water quality, network performance, customer service, maintenance and a variety of other measures, and it can be a challenge to consolidate and analyse these sources of information in a cost effective manner”, comments Kevin Nankivell, Head of Information Technology at South West Water. “We chose Hitachi Consulting as our strategic supplier because it has significant experience of delivering new capabilities to organisations using the latest Microsoft Azure technologies. The company’s expertise with data will ensure the project runs quickly and efficiently, helping us to mitigate risk and drive sustainable change within the organisation.”

“We are delighted that South West Water has chosen to implement Microsoft’s Azure Platform to drive the advancement of Business Intelligence capabilities across the organisation. The combination of South West Water’s aims for operational advances, the flexibility of Microsoft’s Azure platform and Hitachi Consulting’s expertise in delivering IoT and analytics solutions is a powerful one. We look forward to delivering innovative solutions to challenges and opportunities in the water sector that drive sustained improvements,” adds Damian Stirrett, General Manager, Enterprise Partner Group, Microsoft UK.

“South West Water has ambitious plans to change the way data is used, to make it a key strategic asset within its organisation, and we are delighted to be working closely with their team to help realise this goal”, says Claire Thomas, Senior Account Manager, Hitachi Consulting. “There is a significant amount of change taking place across the water industry at present. The opportunities for implementing new technologies present fantastic possibilities in terms of improving business processes and customer experience.  As a leading IoT integrator, Hitachi Consulting brings to clients the industry expertise, intellectual property from delivering Big Data solutions across multiple industries, and the innovation and engineering excellence from across the Hitachi Group. In FY15 alone Hitachi Ltd. invested $2.9billion in R&D. This puts us in an ideal position to help South West Water achieve optimised performance and deliver enhanced customer service.”

About Hitachi Consulting Corporation
Hitachi Consulting is the global management consulting and IT services business of Hitachi Ltd., a global technology solutions leader and a catalyst of sustainable societal change. In that same spirit — and building on its technology heritage — Hitachi Consulting delivers positive business change, propelling companies ahead by enabling superior operational performance. Working within their existing processes and focusing on targeted functional challenges, we help our clients respond to dynamic global change with insight and agility. Our unique approach delivers measurable, sustainable business results and a better consulting experience. For more information visit: www.hitachiconsulting.com

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About Hitachi, Ltd.
Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, delivers innovations that answer society’s challenges. The company’s consolidated revenues for fiscal 2015 (ended March 31, 2016) totaled 10,034.3 billion yen ($88.8 billion). The Hitachi Group is a global leader in the Social Innovation Business, and it has approximately 335,000 employees worldwide. Through collaborative creation, Hitachi is providing solutions to customers in a broad range of sectors, including Power / Energy, Industry / Distribution / Water, Urban Development, and Finance / Government & Public / Healthcare. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at http://www.hitachi.com.