Hitachi aims to provide value to our customers and to society through the realization of a sustainable society.
The IT departments have formulated the 2024 Hitachi Group IT Medium-Term Plan in line with Hitachi's growth strategy. The plan seeks to transform IT so that it will contribute to the expansion of social innovation businesses worldwide.
We have formulated the 2024 Hitachi Group IT Medium-Term Plan based on the 2024 Medium-Term Management Plan.
Under the 2024 Hitachi Group IT Medium-Term Plan, our goal is to contribute to the expansion of social innovation businesses worldwide and to achieve cost levels and data utilization that rank among the best in the world. We will accomplish this by constructing a digital management platform and restructuring IT.
With the aim of providing support for achieving Hitachi's business vision and growth strategy, our IT department has formulated the 2024 Hitachi Group IT Medium-Term Plan. The main pillar of this plan is to build a digital business management platform and implement IT restructuring. We are making steady efforts to implement the measures that we have formulated in order to achieve the goals of the medium-term plan.
The mission of IT departments is to become agile and trusted partners, and to contribute to the acceleration of digitalization and business growth by providing technologies, human resources, and data solutions. To achieve this, we are developing infrastructure and tools to accelerate the use of a standardized and shared IT platform and the use of data with the aim of enabling digital business management. We are also renewing our internal process to boost efficiency.
We are also consolidating and organizing our legacy IT#1 assets, optimizing the cost of IT services, implementing a cloud lift-and-shift approach, and leveraging new technologies in our efforts to push through structural reforms in terms of IT assets, costs, resources, and governance and control increase in regular costs.
In addition, we are working to strengthen IT resilience and control by adopting a more flexible IT architecture and developing and revising IT-related rules and guidelines in response to diversity needs, changes in the business environment, and increasing risks.
Hitachi is working to deliver value to society and customers in diverse industries through the use of digital, green, and connectivity technologies as change drivers. Hitachi BUs#3 and Group companies are moving forward with their strategies to, for example, incubate new digital businesses, achieve environmental goals, and strengthen and diversify human resources. The IT departments are supporting these growth strategies including by making use of IT, digital, and advanced technologies, establishing shared platforms, implementing work style reforms, and developing human resources and are contributing to the execution of these strategies.
As a result of our business portfolio reforms, Hitachi's business assets have been greatly globalized. Compared to the previous year, the ratio of IT costs incurred in countries outside Japan has increased by approximately 20%, and the ratio of IT personnel in countries outside Japan has increased by approximately 10%. This demonstrates that our IT capabilities have been expanding around the globe. With the aim of providing support for Hitachi's business operations, we will build an IT environment in which we can immediately respond to business restructuring and globalization needs such as future M&A deals and deconsolidation of Hitachi Astemo. We will also develop a system that can prevent increases in IT costs even in the midst of business growth.
