HGST getting ready to rumble
I got quoted in Byte & Switch today about Hitachi Global Storage Technology and the new CIO. HGST has been a money pit for Hitachi since they bought the IBM disk operation.
They question is: are they ready to do something about it? The answer is yes.
An informant assures me that HGST has created Raj Das - late of SGI - the new SVP of Marketing.
How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb?
Raj and I worked together at Sun, where he was one of the few results-oriented, damn-the-torpedos marketing guys. He’s high energy and creative.
Turning around Hitachi marketing is going to take everything he’s got. Disk companies are not only engineering dominated - the engineers are even more anti-marketing than most. Add in the culture clash of two proud companies and, well, it isn’t good.
The engineers need to understand one thing. Until the Hitachi GST brand means something positive to consumers - at Fry’s and at datacenters around the world - the company won’t be able to justify an extra nickel of margin. Without that, profitability will remain a mirage.
One, but the lightbulb has to really want to change
I know Raj and I know what he can do. Will the guys across the pond let him do it?
The StorageMojo take
Disk vendors mostly compete on price. HGST has an opportunity to change this by re-thinking the disk value proposition - and the communication of it. The industry is at several inflection points.
Here’s hoping HGST can seize at least one of them. More competition will be good for all of us.
Comments welcome, of course. You can see Raj on the SGI video from a month ago below.
on May 2nd, 2008 at 1:25 am
Robin,
Of all of the words you have written that I have read, (and mostly admired and agreed with or learned from) these words are the most true: “Disk vendors mostly compete on price. HGST has an opportunity to change this by re-thinking the disk value proposition - and the communication of it. The industry is at several inflection points.”
Still, I would have changed it slightly. For example, I would have written that HDD vendors HAVE mostly competed on price”. While price will always play the key role in a commodity market, I believe that is largely from a market point of view. However, a large area of differentiaion that has decided the fortunes or lack of them in the HDD business is manufacturing strategy. In the past this has been pretty much identified as either vertical integration or so-called “virtual” integration. Both strategies seemed to work for a period of time except where execution against either game plan fell short. With the three leading suppliers of HDD moving in the direction of the same hybridized model of in-house manufacturing plus outside manufacturing of key components, this area of differentiation may be dwindling.
All the more reason the masters of HGST’s fate in Japan would be wise to heed your cautionary rhetorical question:”Will the guys across the pond let him do it”. For years HGST fell behind in execution by steering supply line choices and internal processes from disadvantaged viewpoints and without appropriately benchmarking (or responding to benchmarks) of the competition. In the meantime, that competition was developing many fresh views, and was actively seeking new ideas, often from outside the industry. They further challenged suppliers to be participative in this continuous improvement process, as HGST became more inwardly focused on merging the cuturally diverse IBM HDD group with their own. While the competition were linking up with diverse partners, and engaging in accelerated business devlopment and product roll out activities, HGST seemed more engaged in intramural activity.
Raj has a reputation both as an iconoclast and an agent for change coupled with a vast reservoir of energy. No one that I could think of is better suited for the task at hand . But there are equally talented people in his HDD peer group who have a head start. Once again you have once again grabbed the essence of the challenge: “the light bulb has to want to change”.