Looking back at the last five years, it's been a great leap forward in terms of digital technology: from 2020's rush to digitalise, to the 2021 boom in cloud adoption, then the advent of generative AI in 2022 and its subsequent explosion over 2023.

Around APAC, we’ve already seen this play out in the form of government-level investments, big tech companies driving initiatives to expand the talent pool, and ongoing conversations across the HR function about how best to keep the workforce abreast of technological change and disruption.

People Matters had the opportunity to ask Andrew Lim, ASEAN managing director of IT infrastructure services provider Kyndryl, about the trends he's seeing around the region. Here are some of the observations he shared.

From digitalisation, to review and optimisation

The accelerated digitalisation that took place during the pandemic has now transitioned into an optimisation phase where companies are reviewing their digital assets to see what they can do with their investments, said Lim. He identified three trends that stand out:

Cyber resilience: with cyber threats increasing year on year, and especially after major incidents like the CrowdStrike outage in July, companies are looking into how to bolster their cyber defenses and protect their systems.

Cloud-based technologies: the large-scale growth of infrastructure as a service and software as a service. Citing the boom being enjoyed by providers such as ServiceNow and SAP, Lim commented that companies are looking towards more efficient ways of using cloud tech.

Leveraging data for AI: the large amount of data generated by digitalisation together with the increased emphasis on AI is leading many companies to look at how they can better position their data for the use of AI.

"I'm seeing some customers beginning to set up AI departments specialising in the use of AI technology, especially in the financial services sector," Lim said. "We even recently worked with a smart warehouse and logistics company in Singapore called iHub Solutions to build generative AI use cases that helped them improve customer experience."

Where are the opportunities today?

For an infrastructure services provider like Kyndryl, there are a lot of opportunities in most of the countries around the region, Lim said. Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, for example, each have a national AI strategy focusing on various rapidly moving ambitions, and together form a cluster of growth and innovation for IT and digital services. Other countries like the Philippines, where Kyndryl recently appointed a new managing director, are also starting to move quickly.

"We see tremendous opportunities for Kyndryl in ASEAN. It is very exciting for us. The question is whether we can scale fast enough in some of these markets." he said.

One interesting observation he has made recently, he added, is that large corporations have not made significant investments in the IT infrastructure space for several years (during COVID), but that is changing now - creating new openings for providers in the sector.

“We are seeing many of the hyperscalers making significant investments in countries, which have a low level of cloud usage but is going to catch up rapidly,” he said, listing major cloud service providers such as AWS, Microsoft, and Google Cloud, which have already launched or are planning to launch large rollouts in Malaysia in particular.

What about preparing for the use of AI?

“It’s important to have a strong data and digital foundation that includes data strategy, data quality, governance, updated applications – they all contribute to applying AI at scale to drive business results. You can’t put the cart (AI and insights from AI) before the horse (digital foundation + strategy)”, said Lim. 

A large part of helping customers use AI better is increasing your own team’s awareness of AI and its uses, said Lim. Kyndryl has rolled out training to ensure that all employees are educated about the technology, and from his own observations, he said, the organisations he and his teams work with are launching similar initiatives.

“Sometimes it's not so much about doing the right thing, but about being aware when you start to do the wrong thing. For example, if you are using generative AI technologies and you give these tools access to your internal data, that could potentially be a security breach. So the education piece is absolutely important.”

“You need to have a workforce that is educated on technology - not in terms of every single technical detail, but understanding what impact it can have. The power of technology brings about certain responsibilities, a duty of care that they need to apply when they're using these tools.”

Kyndryl was spun off from IBM just three years ago, and since then the ASEAN team that Lim leads has acquired more than 350 certifications with Azure, over 100 certifications with AWS, and over 100 certifications with Google Cloud. These three hyperscalers are Kyndryl's strategic partners, he added, and he and his team work very closely with them on cloud initiatives.

“Our people have a real passion to learn new technology,” he remarked. “Our Kyndryl teams have a true thirst for knowledge and love working with leading technologies, technologies that sometimes they haven't even used before but our client needs, which I see as a hugely positive thing.”