Japan’s Hitachi accelerating digital twin, datacenter projects in LatAm

Japanese conglomerate Hitachi is looking to build new, AI-powered digital twins solutions for power transmission and energy companies in Latin America, and has pilots underway with a couple of players in the region, company executives told BNamericas.

It is also looking to consolidate acquired datacenters for enterprises, a niche the company sees with lots of opportunities across Latin America.

“We have at least 10 customers in Latin America right now involving managed services in datacenters,” Daniel Scarafia, LatAm VP of the Hitachi Vantara unit, told BNamericas.

In both datacenters and digital twins, services are usually provided within the Hitachi group with the support of two subsidiaries: Hitachi Energy, focused on solutions for the energy sector, and Hitachi Vantara, which is the IT, hardware and digital services arm of the Japanese group.

Hitachi Vantara develops data infrastructure, intelligent data management, cybersecurity and AI-powered hybrid cloud solutions for mission-critical operations. 

It operates regional offices in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Chile, with “thousands” of clients in LatAm, said Scarafia. Worldwide, Hitachi Vantara reports a client base of over 30,000 companies.

In the US, the Hitachi group is working with a major power transmission company, with the support of a digital twin of its physical grid and systems, to find the most balanced and efficient way to distribute the power load out to different states, Mike Bush, global senior VP of sales at Hitachi Vantara, told BNamericas.

IBM, HP, Dell and NetApp are players that, depending on the sector and the market, compete with Hitachi Vantara. With some of them, however, Vantara also maintains some specific commercial and technological agreements and partnerships.

Hitachi Vantara's technology partners include Cisco, Veeam and the public clouds of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. The company also works with key systems integrators worldwide such as Accenture, Deloitte, Kyndryl, TCS and Atos.

Among Hitachi Vantara's main public clients are groups with a strong presence in Latin America, such as Telefónica, T-Systems, as well as banks, such as Banco de Brasília.

The financial sector is the main vertical served by the company, accounting for 40-45% of total sales, according to Bush, followed by telecoms, government and healthcare, among others.

In the first quarter of its fiscal year 2024, ended on June 30, the Hitachi group delivered 2.21 trillion yen (US$15bn) in revenues, down from 2.32tn yen in the same period the year before.

Among other projects in Latin America, the Hitachi group is developing subway projects in Lima through Hitachi Rail and supporting a major broadcaster in Brazil in the run-up to the next generation of TV technology.

PETROBRAS

Digital twins have been gaining traction, especially among companies with large production structures and big industrial parks, notably energy and oil and gas.

This is the case of Brazil's Petrobras, which has these digital replicas as one of the core pillars of its technological strategy.

The federal oil giant just announced that its FPSO Cidade de Anchieta and P-57 platforms, which operate in the Jubarte field, completed an important digital twin project.

Both exploration units participated in a pilot that demonstrated the effectiveness of a digital twin, developed by Brazilian company ESSS, which is capable of increasing production by approximately 1%.

The technology provides real-time production system data, generating gains in the lifting and flow process, which corresponds to the transportation of the oil produced from the bottom of the well to the production platforms, the company said. 

The digital twin also makes early identification of occurrences that could compromise production, while allowing virtual testing of solutions.

After two years of testing, the technology was validated and is ready for use, said the company.

The platform can be used in all of Petrobras' offshore production and injection wells, and the company's goal is to begin implementing the tool in the offshore wells of other units this year.