This is an abridged translation of a release announced at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time on May 12, or 11:00 p.m. Japan time on May 12. Hitachi Vantara LLC, a Hitachi, Ltd. group company, announced that Alior Bank, one of Poland’s major banks, is modernizing its virtualization environment with technologies from Hitachi Vantara and Red Hat to reduce costs, simplify operations, and prepare for future business growth. By migrating hundreds of virtual machines supporting critical banking operations from a conventional virtualization platform to an environment combining Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform One, or VSP One, and Red Hat OpenShift, Alior Bank expects to reduce virtualization costs by 60%. The bank also aims to improve operational efficiency and resilience through an integrated technology platform and an active-active configuration that enables systems to run simultaneously across multiple sites while minimizing downtime. As digital services evolve and AI adoption expands in the banking industry, more institutions are reassessing conventional virtualization platforms that increase costs and operational complexity. Legacy IT systems and existing infrastructure also hinder fast and efficient responses to customer needs, with research showing that 59% of banks still face challenges related to legacy technologies. Managing virtual machines and containers in separate environments adds further complexity, driving adoption of integrated platforms that simplify data infrastructure and flexibly support changing application requirements. Founded in 2008, Alior Bank is one of Poland’s top 10 banks and among the country’s most recognized financial institutions. To support continued growth and innovation, it began modernizing its technology infrastructure to improve agility, cost structure, and resilience. As a key initiative, the bank is migrating hundreds of virtual machine workloads from its existing virtualization environment to Red Hat OpenShift, while consolidating virtual mac