Someone said that the signs of the ship sinking were clearly seen even before 2015. I haven’t been in the company for that long, so I only see them now and I can only compare the situation as it is now and as it was two years ago. There is a drastic difference. Still, I wonder now what was the key turning point when things went downhill?
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Guys! Seriously.
What comes to your mind when someone says Hitachi V? I'll tell you what comes to my mind - personal excitement inducing electronic massagers. Thats it. No data, no cloud, just deeldos.
GFK may be better off positioning HV as the D in the C (cloud?) or as a services company servicing Ds in the C.
I was with this company over 25 years and saw many changes through the years. It started out in 1989 as a plug compatible company that had a complete line of mainframe products to compete with IBM and Amdahl. They had great success with the Skyline mainframe but suddenly decided to shut it down and focus on storage. This decision seemed crazy at the time which caused havoc with the customers but proved to be a good decision in the long run. Storage was king. As years went on, profit margins with storage got thinner and started to be a commodity. The term IoT started to bleed into the corporate speak and the new pivot away from storage was among us. This would have worked if they only had a plan. The navigation to get there kept changing. Small companies were bought at a premium that had no real income to speak of. There hasn’t been any real captain in the wheel house since Jack left. There is no future for Hitachi Vantara in the cloud.
HDS way overpaid for Pentaho then ran it into the ground few years post acquisition. New team turned it around and returned business to growth then GFK gets rid of the new team and all enterprise software sellers...GFK put the nail on the coffin and HV will not be able to revive the 100% profit software side which means even lower overall margins going forward! Can’t make this sh_t up!
The other tragic part of this company is what happened with Hitachi Consulting. The downward spiral started when HA became the CEO (I think 2015-ish). Sure there were some major flaws before him - lack of focus, trying to be Accenture instead of focusing on something strategic, lack of investment in IP, etc.
But HA came in and suddenly decided HCC was going to be a "solutions" company focused on cloud, digital, mobile, and IoT without actually investing in any solutions or IP. Instead just tell a good story, hire a bunch of "professional salespeople" and start cashing checks, right? In the process, everyone with any talent or sense departed and now they are left with a bunch of Cognizant rejects in charge. And the strategy now is to be the next India IT outsourcing shop.
"don't overpay for OSS companies" (looking at you Pentaho), and "don't expect picking up bankrupt companies for cheap will solve gaps in software offerings" (Waterline/ContainerShip)."
These HDS/HV executives never learn a darn thing from all the mistakes they made on these M&A. Some insiders once said the company thought they bought a top notch quality video surveillance design/manufacture company. It turned out the company they bought was just a reseller for Dahua Hikvision products. If that was indeed true, then this tell you this company promoted/hire fools to manage and make decisions for the company.
Yeah, I always thought HDS was a good descriptive, yet generic enough name. Vantara is just dumb.
Hear, Hear!!! You're assessment is 100% accurate in my opinion...and I did make over 15 yrs there.
"Vantara" does mean absolutely NOTHING. When a company changes their name and does a massive shift in the market, it's a sign of desperation or a hail mary pass. We new it was the beginning of the end.
So you want to focus on DATA modernization, IoT, DATA intelligence, etc. so you change the name from Hitachi DATA SYSTEMS (your FOCUS now) to Vantara!?!?! Freaking beautiful.....id–ts.
I was on a call last week with a customer and HV came up. The customer embarrassingly said "yeah, we're not moving forward with HV (then there snickers and quiet laughing...). We're having a lot of problems with them right now".
This ship has sank....you're life boat is 3/4 full of water. It's time to start swimming.
I consider myself a 'veteran' even if I didn't even make it to a decade before getting booted. The turning point into mediocrity and irrelevance really accelerated after dismantling the house Jack built... so about 2015 then, and the OP's colleagues aren't wrong.
Since then, HV has been a rudderless ship, that then sold off the planks it was built on up (that's you peeps) until "you are here"... there is not one chance in hell that anyone who comes to me for advice will get told to speak to HV. The appalling name change to "Vantara" which literally meant "nothing" according to the smarts in the boardroom... this acted as a catalyst, combined with a ham-fisted investor call at Limited where Hitachi went on record about paring back its investment in enterprise storage... pouring gasoline onto any planks that were left and letting said rudderless ship burn long into the night.
Others have said it, I'll repeat it, this will make a great case study on how to destroy value in a business in the short-to-medium term. Lessons I'm happy to have learned, in hindsight. Two huge lessons I have taken, if I want to remain in business in the industry, is "don't overpay for OSS companies" (looking at you Pentaho), and "don't expect picking up bankrupt companies for cheap will solve gaps in software offerings" (Waterline/ContainerShip).
Even if storage was dead (and I believe its demise is greatly exaggerated, regardless), HV needed a far more competent strategy and revenue lines up and running before even thinking of pulling the plug on the money cow. Now all that's left is an organisation in spindown mode. A sad state of affairs all told.