Hitachi Vantara has unveiled its EverFlex AI Data Hub as a Service, a cloud-native solution designed to streamline AI and data workflows by providing a unified data lakehouse experience. The fully managed offering enables organizations to access, prepare, and govern data in real time—regardless of whether it resides on premises or across hybrid and public cloud environments.

In an era where fragmented data silos are hindering AI progress, the EverFlex AI Data Hub eliminates complex extract-transform-load pipelines. Instead, it delivers a virtualized lakehouse that supports in-place querying, data virtualization, and rapid analytics. The service also integrates RAG (retrieval-augmented generation), AI model inference, chatbots, avatars, and industry-specific AI models all powered by GPU-enabled infrastructure—within a secure, governed framework.

Hitachi designed the platform to address startling industry insights: nearly 98% of enterprises operate on multiple storage systems, and more than half span four or more environments. Such complexity has contributed to approximately 80% of AI initiatives failing, with over $100 billion lost annually in data preparation alone.

Built on Hitachi’s Virtual Storage Platform One and iQ software stack, and backed by Cisco-powered hybrid cloud infrastructure and Zetaris lakehouse technology, EverFlex emphasizes consolidated data control and governance at the source. Customers benefit from unified data management—across block, file, object, and software-defined storage along with AIOps monitoring, compliance enforcement, and GPU-scale compute services.

The platform is offered under Hitachi’s consumption-based EverFlex infrastructure model, allowing customers to pay only for what they consume. This flexible, service-based approach aims to significantly reduce total cost of ownership by as much as 35%—while simplifying provisioning and day-to-day operations.

Jeb Horton, Senior Vice President of Global Services at Hitachi Vantara, explained that the solution empowers organizations to access AI-ready data in real time, accelerating experimentation and insight generation. By removing traditional data movement bottlenecks, enterprises can move from delayed, batch-heavy analytics to instantaneous, AI-driven decision making.

As AI adoption continues to accelerate, the introduction of EverFlex AI Data Hub as a Service marks a major step in enabling scalable, secure, and efficient data infrastructure. Its integrated approach combining lakehouse architecture, AI workbench tools, GPU compute, and unified governance—signals a new era where data and AI operations converge under a single managed service.

This launch positions Hitachi Vantara as a pioneer in delivering turnkey AI data environments that support continuous innovation, real-time analytics, and simplified hybrid-cloud management giving enterprises a practical pathway to realizing the full potential of their AI ambitions.