How Hitachi Vantara empowering green storage for AI-driven enterprises

As enterprises across India and the SAARC region accelerate adoption of AI, hybrid cloud and data-heavy applications, storage, long viewed as silent plumbing beneath the infrastructure stack, has quickly emerged as one of the most significant contributors to data centre power consumption. In a climate where ESG reporting, regulatory expectations and carbon neutrality commitments are intensifying, CIOs and channel partners are beginning to reimagine storage not as passive hardware but as an active lever of energy optimisation.

Against this backdrop, Hitachi Vantara is positioning modern storage as a measurable and accountable force within the green IT movement. In a conversation with DQ Channels, Sanjay Agrawal, CTO and Head Presales at Hitachi Vantara, India and SAARC, outlines how the company is redesigning storage to drive sustainability without compromising performance, especially for AI-driven enterprises.

Storage Shifts from Power Consumer to Sustainability Catalyst

Sanjay Agrawal describes a decisive shift in the role of enterprise storage, noting that “storage has evolved from a silent power consumer into a strategic catalyst for energy efficiency.” He points to innovations such as Dynamic Carbon Reduction within VSP One Block systems, which allow processors to “shift into eco-mode during low workloads, cutting consumption by up to 40 percent.” Agrawal adds that always-on compression and intelligent data reduction significantly shrink capacity footprints, which in turn reduces watts consumed per terabyte.

Transparency has also become a cornerstone of the new architecture. As Agrawal explains, “integrated telemetry exposes live power and carbon data, turning storage into a transparent, optimisable element of infrastructure rather than a passive drain.” He emphasises that native storage virtualisation enables enterprises to repurpose underutilised systems instead of buying new hardware, further lowering environmental and financial costs. File data analytics and smarter approaches, such as containerisation on bare metal, continue to streamline the operational footprint.

Balancing AI Performance with Energy Responsibility

The rapid growth of AI has forced enterprises to find an equilibrium between high performance and sustainability. Agrawal is direct about this shift, stating that “AI workloads demand both throughput and sustainability.” Hitachi Vantara engineered VSP One Block with this dual requirement in mind, offering NVMe flash performance, guaranteed sub-millisecond latency, 100 percent data availability, and a 4:1 effective capacity guarantee, all of which work together to reduce raw capacity needs and therefore the energy consumed.

He highlights independent validation as well, noting that ENERGY STAR benchmarks rank “VSP One Block 28 at the top with 538 IOPS per watt.” Agrawal adds that enterprises can further reduce energy requirements by making smart architectural decisions within AI projects. “For AI projects, we recommend fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) whenever possible, rather than full training, which significantly reduces compute and energy requirements.” This approach, combined with compression, eco-mode and efficient flash pathways, allows companies to meet their AI ambitions without sacrificing sustainability.

Visibility Is the New Backbone of Green IT

As sustainability becomes a business imperative, visibility has emerged as a critical enabler of action. Agrawal describes this succinctly: “Sustainability cannot be managed without visibility, which is why we introduced VSP 360 Clear Sight.” This cloud-based portal gives organisations consolidated insight into their performance, capacity, energy usage and carbon emissions across distributed environments.

The shared access to metrics brings IT and sustainability teams closer together, enabling them to justify optimisation and monitor progress. Agrawal points to customer impact as evidence of value, noting that “customers such as La Molisana have reported up to 30 percent energy savings and 2.5 times faster response times by using these insights.” He adds that this visibility-driven approach naturally encourages better data management practices, from reducing redundant copies to aligning retention periods with real business needs.

When Green Becomes a Contract: Hitachi’s Sustainability SLA Guarantee

One of Hitachi Vantara’s most distinctive commitments is its Sustainability SLA Guarantee. Agrawal describes this as a shift from aspiration to accountability, stating that “the Sustainability SLA Guarantee represents a step towards change in enterprise storage accountability.”

For qualifying deployments of VSP One and EverFlex, Hitachi Vantara agrees to operate within a predetermined energy budget. Power usage is measured using onboard sensors and verified through Clear Sight. “If actual usage exceeds the contracted power threshold, customers are entitled to service credits,” Agrawal explains, placing sustainability commitments on the same level as availability and performance SLAs.

The underlying message is clear: “It signals that green is no longer a feature but a contractual outcome.”

A Green IT Blueprint for India and the SAARC Region

As organisations across the region pursue aggressive digital modernisation, sustainability is no longer a peripheral consideration; it is becoming central to infrastructure architecture. Agrawal notes that “enterprises in India and the SAARC region are navigating a twin mandate, accelerating digital growth while meeting ambitious sustainability commitments.”

He emphasises that storage will be foundational to meeting these goals. Modern platforms such as VSP One Block allow enterprises to scale capacity while consuming fewer watts per terabyte. Clear Sight enables accurate carbon and energy visibility, while EverFlex consumption models and the Sustainability SLA Guarantee tie infrastructure usage directly to regulatory and business priorities. Virtualisation, containerisation and streamlined file data management continue to reduce physical and energy footprints.

Agrawal encapsulates the strategic shift by saying, “CIOs must prioritise visibility, automation, and accountability, leveraging virtualisation to repurpose assets and aligning AI workloads with efficiency goals.”

Conclusion: Why Storage Is Becoming the Epicentre of Sustainable Digital Growth

The discussion with Sanjay Agrawal highlights a profound shift in how organisations must approach data infrastructure in a decarbonising world. Sustainability is no longer an optional overlay; it is a foundational element of digital transformation strategies. For resellers, system integrators, MSPs and the wider channel ecosystem, this evolution presents a significant growth opportunity.

Hitachi Vantara’s approach, anchored in energy-efficient hardware, transparency-driven analytics, AI-aware optimisation and enforceable sustainability SLAs, positions storage as a central enabler of both performance and environmental impact reduction. As India and the SAARC region continue to expand their digital economies amid rising energy constraints, this new storage paradigm will be critical to reconciling growth with responsibility.

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