Q: Could you briefly introduce Hitachi Digital Services (HDS) and your role within the company?
A: Hitachi Digital Services is a system integrator that builds, maintains mission and business critical platforms. I am the Chief Strategy Officer responsible for creating the overall strategy for the company and execution partnering with the markets and delivery organizations.
Q: How does AI integrate into the IT/OT space, and how significant is its role in driving business outcomes
A: We have been working on AI based solutions for our clients for several years now. There are several areas where we have seen AI playing a significant part in the IT/OT space including diagnosis, insights and action recommendations. Now with Gen AI technologies, the boundaries can be pushed further to drive value in this space. For example, we have been helping a rail industry client with real-time monitoring of performance of various aspects of rolling stock using proactive identification of issues and enabling predictive maintenance. We are now actively working on complementing the existing solution with generative AI technologies to provide operations leaders with insights to drive operations decisions. We are excited about this space with the many possibilities transform business operations with AI technologies complementing existing IT/OT ecosystems and their evolution.
Q: Can you share a recent IT/OT project where AI played a role?
A: Over the past few years, we have been helping one of our clients who is a leading transportation company with transforming their operations specifically with their fleet management. We have been using AI for Proactive Diagnostics for faults based on data from a vehicle’s onboard IOT sensors and identifying maintenance needs before they actually happen. This has significantly helped with increasing the time the fleet is on the road and thereby having a positive impact on the business. Now we are helping them move to the next phase of operations transformation with Guided Repair solutions leveraging Generative AI. Using years of maintenance data, we are now helping to diagnose the fault and recommend repair further increasing efficiency of fleet operations.
Q: HDS focuses on both asset-light (AL) and asset-heavy (AH) industries. Do you see a difference between BFSI and Manufacturing, as an example?
When we look at application of AI technologies such as modelling and tooling, it is very similar for both Asset heavy industries. The difference starts to be more prominent when we consider the use cases. For example, in asset heavy industries such as Energy use of AI needs to consider safety and security of critical infrastructure while in asset light sectors, regulatory compliance may play a critical part in how we leverage AI technologies. This is where domain centricity of the AI solutions starts becoming very important compared to the horizontal capabilities. Hence, we will see the evolution of AI solutions such as domain specific LLM’s that generate content that are relevant, takes into consideration domain specific nuances offering precise and innovative solution offerings.
Q: Finally, any bold predictions for AI in the future?
GenAI transformer models has democratized AI and is changing the way we interact with business and operational technology ecosystems. We will see acceleration of adoption of Chatbot UI’s becoming the ubiquitous medium of engagement across an enterprise’s customer base and their internal business functions. Agentification of processes is bound to transform enterprises with humans and AI agents coexisting in an organization for ongoing business operations. If I were to add one more, I am excited at the possibility of AI Humanoids and humans sharing space, such as on a shop floor building cars or trains or heavy machinery.
Rajesh has been with Hitachi for about 3 years and is responsible for defining strategy and executing for profitable growth across global markets for Hitachi Digital Services with. He is a seasoned executive and has a strong track record of growing and managing businesses, service delivery, and building global teams.
Rajesh brings over 25 years of experience in the technology services industry, and has a long history of innovating to business needs across the enterprise value chain. Before joining Hitachi, Rajesh was a Managing Director at Deloitte serving customers in the role of a lead partner, helping to build technology strategies for customers. Prior to Deloitte, Rajesh was at Cognizant for 20 years in various leadership roles including incubation of new business lines, developing market strategies, building high performing teams globally, partnerships, P&L management, and driving business growth.
As a believer in the power of technology, he is committed to further Hitachi’s vision of delivering innovation to address societal challenges.
