Hitachi has announced plans to expand its digital transformation business, including hiring 30,000 new specialists in the area. The Japanese firm regards building digital transformation solutions as its principal growth area in the medium future. Despite current economic problems, the company believes that when growth restarts, digital transformation will be a major opportunity, and plans to be well placed to take advantage.

Combining IoT and Artificial Intelligence will form the bedrock of Hitachi’s digital transformation strategy. The company aims to expand and deepen the scope and reach of its Lumada IoT platform.

According to a report in Japanese business paper Nikkei Asia, the company plans to expand its workforce over the next three years to 98,000 by March 2025. This will represent an increase of 31,000 from the end of fiscal 2021. Hitachi has set $3.7 billion aside to fund the cost of its workforce expansion.

Hitachi aims to expand its IoT and AI based skills base mainly through a programme of acquisition. The company acquired US software developer GlobalLogic last year, and bought a Romanian software developer in November. The company plans to continue acquisitions to expand its software developer base.

The company aims to achieve around $20 billion in IoT related revenue in 2024, which would represent a 90% increase on its 2021 fiscal year. As a share of revenue, the company wants to expand it from 17% up to 27% of total sales revenues.