Singtel and Hitachi to collaborate on data centres in Japan
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Singtel’s Digital InfraCo chief executive Bill Chang (left) and Mr Toshiaki Tokunaga, Hitachi's executive vice-president and executive officer, at the MOU signing ceremony.
PHOTO: SINGTEL
Michelle Zhu
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SINGAPORE - The regional data centre arm of Singtel’s Digital InfraCo unit, Nxera, is exploring opportunities with Hitachi to develop data centres across Japan and potentially the wider Asia-Pacific region.
This comes as part of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed between Singtel and Hitachi, both parties announced in a joint statement on Aug 26.
Aside from Nxera, Digital InfraCo’s portfolio includes Singtel’s graphics processing unit (GPU) cloud, as well as the group’s Paragon platform.
Singtel and Hitachi said their latest agreement expands on a partnership announced in June to trial and integrate Paragon with Hitachi’s artificial intelligence (AI) applications.
Under the August MOU, Hitachi will also explore using Singtel’s GPU-as-a-service (GPUaaS) for its internal AI applications and workloads.
This, in turn, would allow the Japanese multinational conglomerate to verify complementary Singtel-based benefits to enhance its digital technologies and solutions, such as high-performance machine learning and generative AI.
Singtel and Hitachi foresee the subsequent opportunity to “define more power-efficient methodologies that could advance any enterprise’s sustainability goals”.
Based on the results of Hitachi’s internal GPUaaS verification, both companies may further explore co-creating enterprise-grade applications that combine Hitachi and Singtel’s technologies and platforms.
Mr Bill Chang, chief executive of Singtel’s Digital InfraCo, said the partnership with Hitachi “opens up new opportunities in a strategically important and expanding Japanese market”.
“We look forward to bringing our collective expertise, digital assets and solutions to help more enterprises innovate and transform their businesses and operations through the cloud and AI,” he added. THE BUSINESS TIMES
