Hitachi University Certifications Extends Hitachi Vantara Partner’s Predictable, Profitable and Pioneering Benefits

By Gregory Bucyk posted 08-22-2019 21:51

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We are aligned with how partners continue to evolve, and through a variety or combination of business models of re-sell, deliver and/or create, our partner program is as agile as our technology. This is especially true when it comes to our partner certifications, which validates the knowledge and skills our partners carry to successfully perform services related to their domain expertise, and ultimately creates revenue streams for them in delivering services.

Our certification program continues to evolve in order to offer our partners more unique opportunities from edge-to-cloud through intelligent data operations straight through to data-driven solutions across a variety of industries.

Our partners consistently tell us that our integrated portfolio of technology with open standards is an incredible value-add compared to our competitors, who have multiple lines of products and which place a burden on education and increase unpredictability. We know for example that the Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) is engineered to work with the Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) and Pentaho among other product offerings. Since all of them work together, partners who become certified in one area can easily expand their services and experience into another and increase in product sales and expanding margins.

Based on feedback from our focus groups, our Hitachi Deliver Model allows partners to experience predictable, profitable and pioneering outcomes in their service offerings as they increase their certifications and build out their unique service catalogues. When partners continue to increase their number of competencies, build their own intellectual property in the process and move up to the tip of the pyramid, they increase their profitability, which yields the highest margins.

Our technology provides an integrated portfolio with open standards. Our competitors who have acquired different technologies over time, creating overlapping lines of products and unpredictability when it comes to everything working together. On the other hand, the technologies within our portfolio—VSP, HCP, Pentaho and other offerings--work seamlessly, allowing for partners to extend their certifications quickly and to then easily expand their offerings beyond point solutions. This drives more tangible business outcomes and creating greater relevance and reliance to the partners skills offered. It’s simple math. When you have services on top of product sales, your value, opportunities and margins expand and with an integrated portfolio that opens greater opportunity across multiple use cases.

Certification: Validation of knowledge for a service delivery
Hitachi Certifications enable partners to gain expertise while working with our integrated portfolio, which focuses on data and extending the benefits to the customer through alignment with tangible outcomes that support the business goals. Our certifications program utilizes Kryterion as test delivery provider for all our exams, proctored and un-proctored. Our partners can be assured the Hitachi Vantara exams are developed following the highest certification standards, and that they can be relied upon to adequately validate the skills and knowledge they need. Once partners pass exams, their knowledge and achievement are recognized through logos, official certificates and our verified digital badging, supplied by Certmetrics. Certified partners can visit https://www.certmetrics.com/hitachi to download their certificates and claim any eligible badge.

Often partners ask which tests and training they need to take. It’s simple. If a partner is seeking incremental knowledge in a certain area, we can prescribe a specific training path. In addition, as a default all the certification tests have recommended preparatory course material that align to that area of expertise. Partners have the option to take an exam without coursework when they indicate that they have practical experience. For example, if a partner has many years of domain expertise with data migrations and is already familiar with Hitachi technology, they can decide not to take the supporting training, or take it partially. If the partner’s knowledge is sufficient, the exam results will align with that practical knowledge and confirm certification for data migration. This saves time since all partners do not have to take every recommended course. We’ve found in our focus groups that the overall amount of training related to our Hitachi Certifications can be less due to our integrated portfolio and common storage architecture. For example, on the Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) all current models and even next generation VSPs use the same operating system (SVOS), so a core knowledge set is applicable across the entire storage family. As partners expand their offerings from mid-range to enterprise, they obtain knowledge on different and new functions through delta training versus entire courses. When partners already have related industry expertise having access to small incremental training is ideal as a refresher on select items or filling a possible gap. And with an integrated portfolio, we provide our partners the opportunity to easily expand their areas of expertise and provide solutions across multiple use cases and customer challenges, which benefits everyone.

Aligning with industry analysts, such as IDC, we have found that the possibilities of driving more business are increased by offering educational programs. (See IDC Directions chart, below.) Our partner program aligns with this in terms of roles and responsibilities. We are focused on helping our partners drive business value for their customers, and as a result, we’ve automated our program features to allow our partners to focus their time on being digital innovation experts.

Executives want to have conversations with experts who have knowledge and can support them with unique and trusted advisory services. Partners who invest in expertise create value beyond Hitachi products, but more importantly they develop the intellectual property needed to increase not only their customers’ better business outcomes, but their own organizations’.

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