Friday, July 11, 2025

NCS Launches S$130M AI Initiative Across Asia Pacific for Growth

Related stories

Morphic Studio: How AI Is Redefining Visual Storytelling for Creators

A quiet revolution is happening now. In today's visual...

How Cursor Is Reimagining the Developer Experience with Natural Language Edits

In software development, efficiency goes beyond quick typing or...

LambdaTest adds Playwright Testing on Real iOS devices

LambdaTest, a GenAI-driven quality engineering platform, announced support for...

Avalara Integrates AI Assistant into Tax Research Platform

Get instant, accurate answers to complex tax questions with...

Indium Unveils LIFTR.ai, an Agentic AI for App Modernization

Indium, a leading AI-driven digital engineering firm dedicated to...
spot_imgspot_img

Unveils Sunshine.AI suite, forges six major technology partnerships, and builds an AI-enabled workforce of over 10,000 to catalyse transformation

NCS announced a S$130 million investment over three years to lead change across Asia Pacific (APAC).

At its annual flagship Impact Forum, attended by more than 1,200 leaders and technology practitioners from APAC, NCS outlined a vision where technology transcends borders, best practices are shared across diverse markets, and AI serves to advance communities rather than replace human capability.

NCS launched Sunshine.AI, a suite of AI tools and accelerators that transform how organisations develop intelligent solutions. NCS also announced strategic partnerships with leading global technology players and strengthened collaboration with research institutions, building a dynamic community of AI practitioners that elevates NCS’ AI capabilities and regional leadership.

“With AI reshaping industries as it becomes more accessible than before, we’re partnering government agencies and enterprises to help them harness the best of AI not just for efficiency gains but to advance communities,” said NCS CEO Ng Kuo Pin.

“Expanding our APAC footprint and doubling down on collaborations with technology leaders are still important in a bifurcated world. The investment we are making over the next three years and our blueprint anchored by three pillars – Intelligentisation, Internationalisation and Inspiration – will better enable our people and clients to create new business outcomes and build a resilient, innovative future with AI,” he added.

Intelligentisation: More than Digitalisation – A Blueprint for AI-Powered Transformation

Intelligentisation is a structured, holistic approach to embedding intelligence into the core of business processes, government workflows, and human experiences. This means designing AI systems not as standalone tools, but as integral components of decision-making, service delivery and operational flow. Central to this are NCS-proprietary tools, accelerators and methodologies.

From assessment to design to implementation, the NCS Sunshine suite of tools is tailored for developers, IT operations teams and corporate users. It comprises:

  • Sunshine.Coder, an AI coding assistant that supports language conversion, test generation, and code analysis
  • Sunshine.Operations, an AIOps platform designed to automate incident triage, system log analysis, and operational task flows
  • Sunshine.Productivity, a suite of tools that enhance day-to-day tasks such as summarisation, content retrieval, and secure document handling.

NCS’ accelerators comprise proprietary frameworks, code libraries, and deployment toolkits that mirror human cognitive functions like perception, reasoning, decision-making, and action.

Also Read: Context Launches an AI-Native Office Suite to Automate 2.5 Trillion Hours of Annual Knowledge Work

This approach recognises that AI can only be as strong as a system’s digital resilience, which covers Cybersecurity, Data Backbone, Applications Interplay, Infrastructure Robustness and Operations Responsiveness. These factors ensure organisations possess the attributes necessary for sustained AI adoption.

As an example of this focus, NCS has signed a five-year Master Agreement with Singapore’s HTX to architect HTX’s foundational data core, embed intelligence such as Agentic AI into systems, adopt quantum-safe technologies, and scale robotics solutions. The collaboration will integrate and streamline data across Home Team agencies and embed next-generation intelligence into systems to enhance operational effectiveness.

In addition, Singtel Group is partnering with NCS to embed AI as a core capability across its business, using AI as a strategic driver. As Singtel’s AI-implementation arm, NCS will build solutions leveraging its comprehensive portfolio of tools, including its Sunshine.AI suite as well as Gen AI and Agentic AI assets and accelerators. Singtel and NCS will collaborate to identify, shape and realise high-impact opportunities, using AI to transform operations, customer experience and strengthen its data, AI and cloud infrastructure. This includes optimising customer value management through personalisation, streamlining processes, and building autonomous networks – all built on a foundation that enables scalable AI adoption.

“Intelligentisation means treating AI as part of the enterprise’s core nervous system, engineered with the same rigour, trust, and responsiveness demanded of mission-critical infrastructure,” explained Kuo Pin.

Internationalisation: Fragmentation – the Reason for Collaboration

As the global AI landscape fragments across technology stacks, governance models and digital ecosystems, cross-border collaboration and strong technology partners matter more than ever in delivering strong value for clients.

Regional AI Capability Expansion

In March, NCS announced a Joint Venture with the Philippines’ Globe Telecom to take a majority stake in its technology services arm Yondu. This will add 1,200 technology professionals to the NCS workforce while scaling its capabilities in Agentic AI, Data Foundation, and Data Management services. They will complement the existing 13,000-strong NCS workforce across SingaporeAustraliaGreater ChinaIndia and Southeast Asia, enabling NCS to better serve its clients. Globe Telecom and NCS are also co-developing telco-centric solutions addressing unique telecommunications transformation challenges across the region.

Technology Ecosystem Partnerships

In addition, six strategic partnerships announced at Impact demonstrate how collaboration amplifies innovation across fragmented AI landscapes.

  • AWS: Accelerating Secure GenAI Deployment in ASEAN. NCS announced it has signed Singapore’s first multi-year GenAI Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services (AWS), enabling the rapid deployment of secure GenAI solutions that enhance efficiency, workforce enablement, and customer experience. This new SCA builds upon the NCS x AWS GenAI Centre of Excellence for Public Good initiative launched last year and enables public sector organisations to accelerate their AI initiatives from prototype to production through the expertise of 50 NCS GenAI specialists with additional expertise from the AWS Generative AI Innovation Centre.
  • Databricks: Developing Service Offerings for Businesses Across the Region. NCS is Databricks’ first partner in ASEAN, Australia and Greater China to develop service offerings, leveraging recently announced SAP Databricks solutions and NCS’ in-house expertise. NCS will roll out a suite of Databricks accelerators for finance, energy, and utilities sectors, enabling clients to deploy AI solutions more rapidly, reducing project risk and cost. As part of this collaboration, Databricks will also invest in upskilling NCS practitioners across the region and contribute technical expertise.
  • Dell Technologies: Scaling Real-World Deployments Across Asia Pacific. NCS, a Dell Global Titanium Partner, is collaborating with Dell Technologies to accelerate AI adoption across Asia Pacific by developing next-generation AI engineers. Dell has trained a significant number of NCS AI engineers and is committed to expanding that effort over the next year, backed by a multimillion-dollar investment. These engineers will help enterprises manage real-world AI workloads, including agentic and generative AI, turning ideas into scalable and production-ready solutions.
  • Google Cloud: Accelerating Clients’ Implementation of Applied AI+DR Solutions. NCS and Google Cloud are deepening their long-term partnership, enabling organisations to utilise interoperable, enterprise-grade generative AI and agentic AI platform services to move from AI vision to tangible, real-world value. In Singapore, NCS is the latest addition to Google Cloud’s AI Cloud Takeoff (AI CTO) programme under Digital Industry Singapore’s Enterprise Compute Initiative, serving as a certified consulting partner to help local enterprises create AI-driven intellectual property and services that boost their competitiveness and unlock new revenue opportunities. NCS and Google Cloud have established a joint AI and Digital Resilience (AI+DR) Specialist Team, dedicated to accelerating clients’ implementation of applied AI solutions.
  • NVIDIA: Launching Three Agentic AI Solutions. NCS has developed three agentic AI solutions on NVIDIA AI Enterprise software. NCS KAI Video Search and Summarisation Platform (KAI SnS) enables rapid extraction of insights from multiple video sources or live feeds by identifying objects, incidents, and key topics – achieving speeds up to 80x faster than the traditional review process with AI Agents. NCS Sunshine.Operations for MLOps and AIOps uses intelligent agents to automate AI operations across data, models and pipelines to enable full AI/ML lifecycle automation, scalability, faster deployments and real-time issue resolution, leading to productivity improvement. NCS AgentCanvas is a framework that accelerates agentic AI creation and deployment by translating domain expertise into functional, deployment-ready AI agents.
  • Sunline: Accelerating Core Banking Modernisation Across Asia. NCS will work with Sunline, China’s largest core banking solutions provider, to accelerate digital transformation in the banking sector. As Sunline’s regional services partner, NCS will manage local implementation, production support, data migration, and ongoing systems maintenance, focusing on modernising the core banking system of the region’s banks.

Inspiration: Empowering people, hyper-localising AI, advancing communities

As AI advances, public concerns about job displacement and loss of control can also rise. Yet this presents an opportunity to design AI that augments human capability rather than replacing it, keeping humans in the centre. Inspiration is more than a theme. It is a call to business leaders to apply this powerful technology to advance communities; where people and AI evolve together, not apart.

Advancing Hyperlocal AI Ecosystem: NCS actively shapes Singapore’s broader AI landscape through collaborative initiatives that prioritise cultural relevance and ethical development. As a key industry partner to AISG’s SEA-LION, the company helps refine language models for Southeast Asian contexts while applying them within enterprise operations. As a founding member of the MERaLiON Consortium, NCS advances conversational AI use cases reflecting regional languages and operational context – from next-generation contact centres to enterprise productivity assistants.

NCS also contributes to the Infocomm Media Development Authority’s AI Verify Foundation, demonstrating its commitment to establishing internationally recognised standards for AI reliability, safety, fairness and robustness; and helping define how AI systems can be measured and trusted at scale.

Uplifting an Entire Workforce: More than 10,000 NCS employees have achieved AI enablement through comprehensive training, industry certifications, and practical implementation experience. This includes over 1,000 professionals certified across major cloud platforms including AWS, Google, Microsoft and NVIDIA – creating an AI-enabled workforce capable of guiding clients through complex transformations.

Source: PRNewswire

Subscribe

- Never miss a story with notifications


    Latest stories

    spot_img