OREANDA-NEWS. Hitachi, Ltd. announced that it has established the Hitachi Global Center for Innovative Analytics (HGC-IA) to globally provide customers innovative solutions that leverage the power of big data. Linking Hitachi operating units and local researchers and engineers located in the U.S., the U.K., Japan and other regions around the globe, HGC-IA will leverage the company's world-class research, business consulting, information technologies and services to collaborate with its global customers to co-innovate, develop and apply end-to-end big data solutions. HGC-IA is going to also recruit talents in overseas.

Hitachi's clients are experiencing exponential data growth generated by businesses, humans and machines. This data can provide valuable insights for organizations in business sectors such as distribution, health care, financial services, government and social infrastructures such as energy, water treatment and transportation.

On April 1, 2012, Hitachi established the "Smart Business Innovation Laboratory" in the Information and Telecommunication Systems Company. This laboratory consists of data analytics meisters, big data scientists focused on services and started to provide the Data Analytics Meister Service that helps customers create new business value from big data in June, 2012. The laboratory has worked on many initiatives in Japan and other regions around the world. For example, the laboratory developed analytics technologies in the retail sector to capture and analyze logistics and related sales with customer and employee movements enabling dramatically improved store management. The second example is in the insurance sector where non-life insurance companies can leverage the analysis of driving record data to provide the most suitable auto insurance policies according to a customer's driving behavior. The last example is in transportation where Hitachi is providing big data analytics for preventative maintenance for rail cars based on analysis of data from railway facilities.

Hitachi has built a robust, global research and development foundation to support Hitachi's big data business. As part of this foundation, Hitachi established the Big Data Research Laboratory in the U.S. on April 1, 2013, which consists of big data specialists in data analytics, marketing and research.

The HGC-IA will coordinate and integrate activities across Hitachi, Hitachi Consulting and Hitachi Data Systems to extend big data research and development into the business and IT environments of global clients. The HGC-IA will also coordinate and integrate activities between the U.S. Big Data Research Laboratory, the Europe Big Data Research Laboratory with the focus of health care (established in the U.K. on June 1, 2013) and other related research organizations. Initially, these Hitachi business units and laboratories will provide integrated big data resources including human resources, technology and solutions on a global basis to effectively meet the expanding needs of Hitachi's worldwide customers.

HGC-IA has begun operations with a staff of approximately 300 members and plans to increase to 500 members globally over the next two years. By strengthening its core big data business and applying new big data technologies and know-how for its global customers in related areas such as its cloud-based technologies and services, Hitachi aims to increase its revenues from big data related businesses to 150 billion yen (approximately 1.5 billion U.S. dollars) in fiscal 2015.