Gajen Kandiah CEO, Hitachi Vantara

Hitachi Vantara‘s board of directors announced that Gajen Kandiah has been appointed CEO, effective July 13, 2020.

Toshiaki Tokunaga, currently CEO and chairman of the board will transition responsibilities to Kandiah through October 1, 2020, after which he will remain as chairman.

“I am proud of the tremendous progress Hitachi Vantara has made in the past year to augment our world-class digital infrastructure business with new digital solutions and service offerings,” he said. “Thanks to strong internal development, strategic acquisitions, and the integration with Hitachi Consulting, we have added the capabilities we need to guide our customers from what’s now to what’s next. Gajen Kandiah has an impressive track record in rapidly scaling digital businesses. He is the perfect CEO to help Hitachi Vantara, its partner ecosystem and our customers further accelerate their success.”

Kandiah has built IT businesses within multinational corporations and start-ups for more than 2 decades. During 15 years with Cognizant, he helped grow the company from $368 million in annual revenues to more than $16 billion. He was most recently president of firm’s multi-billion-dollar digital business, a role in which he led the acquisitions of software engineering company Softvision, marketing solutions provider Netcentric, and Idea Couture, a digital innovation and technology services company. He also led a Cognizant-wide initiative to tansform company capabilities and services into an integrated, industry- and client-focused suite of offerings and solutions.   

He previously served as SVP and general GM of Cognizant’s information, M&E; manufacturing logistics; consumer goods; and communications industry practices. Before that, he co-founded NerveWire, Inc., a VC-backed management consulting and systems integration firm, which was later acquired by Wipro.

“Hitachi is a market leader at the intersection of innovative industrial solutions and IT services, and it is a brand trusted worldwide to deliver business, environmental and social benefits,” said Kandiah. “These attributes give Hitachi Vantara an incredible set of advantages that I believe the company and its cloud and strategic go-to-market partners are only just beginning to realize. The opportunity to lead Hitachi Vantara is a thrilling one. I am confident that if we align our broad portfolio of data storage, analytics, industry-specific solutions and IT services behind a singular vision to delight our clients, we will become a true digital leader.”