'Lot of potential...': TCS COO is optimistic about generative AI but aware of adoption constraints

Tata Consultancy Services’ Chief Operating Officer, N Ganapathy Subramaniam is optimistic on the potential of generative AI and its applications. But despite that, he believes that the technology has certain “constraints” when it comes to adoption at an enterprise level.

In an exclusive conversation with Business Today, Subramaniam said, “Generative AI technology has a lot of potential. It has been widely embraced by consumers, and now enterprises are exploring its applications. However, there are constraints when adopting generative AI at an enterprise level.”

The COO also noted down the types of challenges that an enterprise is likely to face when it comes to large scale adoption of generative AI. “They can be cost, protecting competitive advantages, and ensuring organizational competence, ” he said.

The IT major has been building products to overcome these issues, he added. “We are currently piloting the capabilities of generative AI and working to develop an architecture or model for enterprises to adopt and embrace generative AI while protecting their competitive advantage and enhancing it. We aim to integrate this technology as a differentiating feature in our products and services while staying relevant to our customers,” the COO noted.

TCS has been pushing hard to get on the generative AI bandwagon. As per the company’s website, the IT services company has over 50,000 associates trained in AI. Moreover, they plan on earning 40,000 skill badges collectively on Google Cloud Generative AI within the year. Apart from that, they recently announced that 25,000 engineers at the company would be training on Azure OpenAI.

Along with skilling, TCS is also actively building partnerships with big tech companies to leverage their AI capabilities. Earlier this month TCS announced that it would be extending its partnership with Microsoft to scale its Azure OpenAI expertise. The IT services giant also plans on launching its new Generative AI Enterprise Adoption offering on Microsoft Cloud.

Furthermore, in May the company announced an expanded partnership with Google Cloud. They also announced the launch of their offering– TCS Generative AI– which was launched in the same month. TCS Generative AI leverages Google Cloud’s generative AI services, to design and deploy custom-tailored business solutions.

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