Akinobu Shimada is the chief product and planning officer for Hitachi Vantara's Digital Infrastructure organization. He leads long-term product strategy and planning and business operations for Hitachi Vantara and Hitachi, Ltd. In this role, he maximizes engineering and business capabilities so that Hitachi can continue to deliver innovative technologies and unique industry products and solutions.

Previously, Shimada was the division vice president of IT platform products at Hitachi, Ltd. In this position, he was responsible for hardware and software engineering for storage and compute as well as global business promotions, which were done in collaboration with Hitachi Vantara.

Shimada joined Hitachi, Ltd. in 1989 at Odawara Works in Japan. For 25 years, he worked on architecture design, technology strategy and product planning for storage businesses. He also spent time in a senior management role at Hitachi Data Systems, where he was responsible for products and business strategy and planning.

Shimada holds a mechanical engineering degree from Tokyo City University in Japan.