Hitachi Consulting Spreads Its WingsHitachi Consulting Spreads Its Wings

Hitachi Consulting, one of the largest players in Japan's IT outsourcing market, is expanding its presence in North America with an eye to capturing a bigger share of business-process-outsourcing revenue.

The subsidiary of manufacturing company Hitachi Ltd. has launched an outsourcing division to chase outsourcing contracts from midmarket customers. "Businesses don't have a lot of options if they want to outsource specific applications or processes that are too small to draw interest from the larger players but are too large for boutique firms to handle," says Hitachi Consulting CEO Michael Travis. He says his goal is to make Hitachi Consulting a $1 billion services company by 2005. The company's revenue stands at about $120 million. In order to hit the $1 billion mark, Gartner analysts say Hitachi Consulting will most likely have to acquire smaller consulting businesses and increase its staff to about 5,000 consultants. The upside: "As a $68 billion global corporation, Hitachi has the means to sponsor this," says a recent Gartner report.

Hitachi Consulting will host client operations at shared-services data centers that support Hitachi's internal operations. It's looking to partner with an Indian firm to provide offshore services.