NCS-Microsoft collaboration scales up

Source: NCS. Ng Kuo Pin, CEO, NCS (right) and Ahmed Mazhari, President, Microsoft Asia (left) launching the expanded collaboration to accelerate innovation, create new intellectual property as well as solutions for clients.

NCS has expanded a collaboration with Microsoft in Asia Pacific to accelerate AI and cloud solutions for enterprises and governments. The company will invest an initial S$1.5 M to create solutions and new IP across Microsoft's solution areas.

Based on a shared vision of harnessing technology and innovation, the collaboration will include investments in IP creation, unified go-to-market, and accelerated buildup of capabilities. Through the expanded collaboration, clients across Asia Pacific can better harness emerging technologies including generative AI amid a rapidly evolving business landscape. They will be supported by Microsoft’s technology experts and the 1,000-strong certified team at NCS. Additionally, clients can take advantage of NCS’ end-to-end technology services, strong Asia Pacific delivery track record, and proven expertise in localisation of solutions.

Ng Kuo Pin, CEO of NCS said: “This collaboration brings our longstanding partnership with Microsoft to the next level. It strengthens NCS’ commitment to drive innovation and positive impact with our clients and partners for the communities and enterprises we serve across Asia Pacific. We will create cutting-edge IP, harness solutions, and build capabilities in emerging technologies. We are excited to build the next generation of end-to-end solutions, accelerate digital transformation of industries, and create breakthrough innovations with Microsoft.”

Ahmed Mazhari, President, Microsoft Asia, said, “We are thrilled to collaborate with NCS to drive innovation and accelerate growth in Asia Pacific. As we reach an inflection point with AI and cloud breakthroughs, Microsoft will continue to invest in advancing technology and solutions that empower digital transformation and enable organisations and individuals to achieve more.”

As part of this collaboration, NCS is establishing a dedicated team for Microsoft solutions to orchestrate and accelerate innovation, sales, and delivery for the organisation. The Microsoft business at NCS will be led by Sharath Burla, Senior Partner, and John Kelly, Global Microsoft Alliance Lead. The team will cover all six Microsoft solution areas: Infrastructure, Data & AI, Digital & App Innovation, Modern Work, Security, and Business Applications, for which NCS has achieved the Solution Partner designation from Microsoft.

NCS’ digital services arm, NEXT will play a key role in co-creating AI-enabled innovations with clients and deploying them on Microsoft technology. NEXT has already combined NCS’ in-house hyperlocal speech-to- text engine with Microsoft Copilot to enable high conversational accuracy, a critical foundation for many generative AI applications.

NCS’ network of delivery centres in Pune, Hanoi, Manila, Chengdu, and Guangzhou will also provide clients with cost-effective delivery models. The expanded array of end-to-end offerings will be showcased at Tesseract, NCS’ Innovation Centre in Singapore, and Microsoft Innovation Centres in the region.

NCS will make go-to-market investments to provide expedited pre-built and validated Microsoft solutions to clients. NCS will also help clients to adopt and leverage generative AI, cloud, security, and Copilot-powered productivity technologies. In addition, NCS will invest in GitHub Copilot to strengthen the effectiveness and quality of software development projects with AI.