‘Playtime is Over’ for GenAI with NTT DATA’s Nitin Bajaj

This is Textron tv. Hey, everyone. Welcome back here to techron tv.

I'm really happy to introduce you to my next guest, Ms. Nitin Bajaj. And Nitin is the VP of Digital Offerings at NTT Data.

Now, I know you guys know NTT, and you probably heard the name NTT data, but I don't know if you understand who and what and where NTD data data is. We're gonna talk about it, but first, let's extend a warm welcome knit and welcome to Textron tv. How are you?

Thank you, Alan, and thanks for having me today. I am wonderful. It's, uh, almost holiday time, so just getting ready for some Yes, uh, festivities, but, uh, glad to speak with you today.

I'm glad to have you on with us. Nate and I mentioned you were from NTT data, and we're gonna jump into that in a second. But your title there is VP of Digital Offerings, which quite frankly can cover up a lot of sins.

Right? That's a great title to cover, you know, what goes on underneath the covers. Um, let's talk a little bit about you though.

How, how did you come to be the VP of digital offerings here and kinda what's your background? Yeah, absolutely, Adam. So I've been with NTT for almost 11 years.

It's gonna be 11 years in January. And, um, I started my career, uh, as a consultant, uh, in the data and analytics space. Uh, so I have a lot of deep experience, uh, working with data warehousing, data strategy, uh, governance, et cetera, et cetera.

And when I started NTT data, I was kind of in that role, right? Um, it's been a fantastic experience. Uh, I'm on my sixth role in the organization.

Um, and, um, you know, progressively taking on more responsibility, um, in, in the role of digital offerings, we are looking at essentially the entire portfolio of offerings. What do we do as, uh, uh, NTT data as a company? Uh, what are the capabilities and services that we bring to market and, um, how we shape them over the long term so that they can be of maximum benefit, uh, to our clients?

Right? Uh, this year, my focus specifically is on generative ai and, um, essentially, um, on driving the go-to market for generative ai, uh, across our international business. So that's the entire business outside of Japan.

Um, NTT data itself is a $30 billion company. We are the fifth largest technology company serving about 75% of the Fortune, uh, a hundred clients in the world. Um, out of this, um, NTT data, um, has an international business, which is roughly about $18 billion, and then a Japanese business, which, uh, which is the rest of the business, about 11 to $12 billion.

Um, we have a fairly wide, uh, portfolio of services that we take to market with our clients. Um, key topic areas that we cover our data and ai, obviously, and that's gonna be a, a topic of discussion today. Uh, we have a very broad application services business that includes both, you know, more traditional application management services, et cetera, but a lot of digital engineering, software engineering type of business.

Um, we deliver digital workplace services. So essentially, uh, the one 800 number call, uh, that, you know, most employees call for from their employer to get it help. Um, we power a lot of that from many, many companies.

Um, and then we've got a pretty marque, uh, cloud and security business and A BPO business, uh, that's specialized on specific verticals and industries, uh, across the globe. So it's a, it's a, it's a sprawling business. Uh, it's a fast growing business, and, uh, we are very excited to, uh, you know, kind of work with our clients on the journey that has started about a couple of years ago with the launch of chat GPT.

But really generative AI is kind of taking front and center stage across the entire portfolio, right? It's transforming how we work with our clients, what we do for our clients, and more importantly for our clients. This is a, not only a technology step change, but it's also a business step change, right?

So it's gonna drive a lot of transformation. We're trans starting to see a lot of that, uh, manifesting itself, uh, in our engagements. I What a great year to be in charge of a, of gen AI stuff, huh?

It is. It's been an, it's been quite a journey and, you know, really where we started the whole year, uh, if you look at the beginning of F five or of, uh, calendar 24, right? Um, there there was a lot of excitement for the technology.

There was a lot of, um, you know, hype about the technology, but most clients where they were at the beginning of the year, they were experimenting, right? So we worked a, with a lot of clients, um, just essentially ideating, what can gen AI do for you, right? What's the technology?

How does it work? How does it work in their particular business? And so the year started off very strong with a strong portfolio of POCs that we are working.

So not only POCs, but looking at, uh, business prioritization. What are key use cases in the organization that might be ripe for experimentation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right? And different organizations have been in different, uh, stages of maturity and, and that wave, uh, kind of pressed around June, July timeframe, right?

What's emerging now is a very, very strong, uh, focus on delivering value from gen ai as you're seeing kind of the early adopters moving from POCs to scale production deployments in some, uh, in some clients that we're working with, you know, they've got 20, 30, 40 use cases that they're trying to push to, uh, production and scaling out gen AI as, as a key, uh, technology topic. But the vast majority of organizations are planning their first, second, third use case in production, and we anticipate that to ramp up over the next year very significantly. Great.

So, so we, we, we, we, we are partnering very closely with our clients along this journey, but we wanted to have, um, you know, kind of a much broader view of the market bear our clients. What are they working on? What are they thinking?

Uh, so we launched this, uh, generative AI study, um, that's spoken to roughly about, you know, uh, 2000 plus, uh, uh, C level executives, uh, across the globe. And, um, the, the results have been very, very interesting, right? So we are looking at strategy and transformation, talking to them about innovation and technology, talking about people and culture, ethics and sustainability, and across the entire spectrum of topics that we surveyed, um, there's some very, very, you know, interesting findings, and some of those I'd like to share with you today.

Please go right ahead. Yeah, absolutely. So, the first and foremost, right, um, there's a lot of hype and expectations are kind of right setting, but if you look at it from the CEO perspective, 97% of CEOs in the study anticipate a material impact from gen AI in their business, right?

70% of those expect very significant transformation by 2025. So this wave is not only, uh, a hype, but it's actually gonna manifest into a lot of different transformation activities within our client organizations. 83% have defined a gen AI strategy, but when you talk deeper with them, you also find that 51% have yet to align how the business plans, uh, align with the gen AI strategy.

So I think this is a kind of a very key, uh, point for us, is that there is a lot of potential in the market to kind of align business planning with the technology strategy so that there, there's actually results that can be driven, uh, from the technology adoption itself, right? From a technology, uh, strategy and transformation perspective. I think the, the key, uh, takeaway was, um, this, there's a cycle of consolidation and integration of technol, uh, gene AI technologies.

And, you know, there's, we are looking at experimental, um, uh, topics. We are looking at phased and specific approaches. Uh, we are also looking at, you know, broader, uh, teams that organizations are deploying.

But focus spending will, uh, uh, replace kind of scattered experimentation in a relatively short time. Uh, 70% of CEOs expect that significant transformation. And then 83% of respondents said that there's a well-defined gen AI strategy in place.

Um, and as they, they progress the year, they want to cover that and align that with their business strategy, right? Um, the, the, the, the key, I think, uh, is going to be how much we are able to, uh, focus on ROI and focus on, uh, the value that we can generate for the business. So that's kind of a key, uh, takeaway for us from a technology and innovation perspective.

Um, the, the, the important thing I think we heard was that 90% said that legacy infrastructure hinders the effective use of gen ai. Um, but still, um, you know, 96% of CIO CTOs also feel that cloud-based solutions are like the most practical way of supporting GENAI applications in their production environments right now. Right?

So the, the gap really is how do we work and partner with our clients to help them fix and, uh, figure out how to improve their legacy infrastructure issues. So they may be issues with how, how they host their IT services, rather they're in a private cloud, whether in a public cloud, it may be data challenges. Um, are there datas in sitting in specific silos unaccessible by generative AI models?

There may be application challenges. So they might have a sprawling set of application portfolio, and that might require rationalization and modernization to really effectively utilize gen AI in, in their business, right? But I think key here is going to be, it's not just experimenting with, uh, the large language models.

It's not just deploying kind of the cool applications, but it's also the work of transforming legacy infrastructure so that it's well positioned to utilize the technology itself, right? And I think that's gonna be a key driver for momentum in the market, uh, from a people and culture perspective. Go ahead.

Yep, go ahead. No, no, go ahead. I, I want No, no.

I'd like you to finish, because this way we could get it all in perspective people and culture. Yeah. So people and culture, um, almost everyone, right?

96% respondents, uh, want to streamline how gen ai, um, streamlines the future employee workflows and support processes. However, you know, almost two thirds, like 67% of respondents said that their employees lack the necessary skills, right? So there's a lot of obstacles here that will be required to be solved over the next, uh, few months and maybe the next year, year and a half, right?

Uh, the, the users who perceive limited value for gen ai limited awareness, uh, of the solutions, user resistance concerns about safety and security. So there's a lot of these topics that have to be very programmatically worked on, um, in, in our client organizations. Um, it's almost like change management, but this is change management in a very different sense, right?

There's not change management structure to solve for a project deployment. This a change management on essentially how employees work and experience and, uh, live their day-to-day lives within the organization, and how we can kind of, um, um, you know, uh, decrease the barriers for them to adopt the technology that that's deployed by, by their employers. Uh, then finally, I think, uh, I'll cover just a little bit on ethics, safety, and sustainability, right?

Um, 81% of respondents said that it's very important for leaders to help employees balance innovation responsibility. So there's almost like a top down requirement here on how, um, gen AI is kind of adopted, how innovation is tested, and how, uh, we balance that innovation responsibility. Uh, the other I think, very, very insightful, um, uh, uh, uh, feedback that we got was 45% of CSOs express concern about this technology.

They feel they're pressurized, they're threatened. There's, um, you know, um, sense of being overwhelmed, um, a lot of pressure from the top of the house to actually deliver results, but there's also a lot of security considerations. There's also risk, trust, security considerations that have to be, uh, solved for, to effectively deploy the technology in a safe manner, uh, in a secure manner, and in a way that it actually benefits the organization, doesn't tighten them to, uh, external, uh, uh, external threats, if you will.

Right. So I'll stop there and, and, um, sure. So I, I think you covered a lot of ground here.

I, I think, you know, to the first part you talked about in talking about C level expectations, CEO expectations, look, we, we came off a year where we saw unprecedented layoffs in tech, not, maybe not unprecedented, but first time we've seen layoffs of this nature maybe since the dotcom bubble burst. Yeah. Right?

25 years ago. Um, and for a lot of executives, when you spoke to them, they said, we're gonna do more with less. We're gonna do more because of AI with less people.

And that mindset work worked its way down, right? To, to employees who are now afraid of their jobs, afraid for their jobs, because are they gonna be replaced by ai? So instead of embracing AI to help them be more effective in their job, they're backing off from ai, they're apprehensive about ai.

Some of them may not wanna say, I'm afraid of AI because it may cost my job, but I think you see that in the 67% there, right? Uh, yeah. It, it, it, it's there.

Secondly, you know, I just came back from Vegas two weeks ago for AWS reinvent. I don't know if you were out at reinvent, but clearly Amazon AWS is betting the house at the overwhelming majority of organizations are gonna modernize their app, their applications to be AI empowered. And in doing so, they probably gotta move to maybe a cloud native architecture that, but they're gonna need, you know, a lot of horsepower with GPU style, you know, hardware, silicon, they're going to need models, training of models, you know, and all of the things that go into this, let's call the new gen AI stack of compute and Amazon A WSI mean, they're making, and it's not just AWS Google and Microsoft and all the cloud providers, you know, are making this push.

So I think, I do think that modernizing applications be AI empowered is big business big. I mean, I'm sure NT you guys are gonna see this out, out in it A hundred percent. I mean, I think we're seeing that, right?

And, and I think of, um, I'm, I'm an optimist in this sense, but I think of like generative AI kind of change and wave that's kind of, uh, starting up, uh, in earnest now almost equal into kind of like the outsourcing When the internet came out, right? Right. Exactly.

The internet came out bigger, outsourcing bigger than The out outsourcing wave, right? The outsourcing wave was big for technology. The cloud was big for technology.

Yeah. The internet was big for humanity. It was, AI was, yes, AI is gonna be big for humanity.

It's gonna change the way, not just tech guys like you and me. Yeah. You know, we, our world changes every five years.

That's why we love being in tech. Think about your wife's family. This is what I always tell people.

Think about your wife's family and what effect AI is gonna have on them, or, you know what I mean? People who aren't in the tech world, we gotta run. But I got one other, I got one other thing I wanted to ask you, if you don't mind.

I think the only black cloud, the only thing that could put the brakes on this, our security and regulation, I think people are afraid that, Hey, this thing can't run amok. We've gotta put some breaks on here. We've gotta put some controls in place.

And until I know what those controls are, I can't go hard. Wild. Yeah.

Right. A hundred percent. Right.

And that's kind of reflected a little bit in our study as well, right? So when we spoke to these, uh, C level executives and senior executives, I think there's a very good understanding that, uh, number one, you know, 82% of people it's coming still, that, you know, government regulations are unclear, right? They're, they're unclear by geography, they're unclear by region.

Sometimes the same states have different guidance. Um, and, and that's gotta be solved for, I think that is going to be a key driver, uh, of whether this picks up momentum or this kind of stock stay stuck in the cog mire with organizations having to deal with, uh, multiple kind of regulatory regimes, right? Um, also agreed, um, you know, everyone's excited about it, but 72% of organizations don't have very clear usage policies for employees.

No. They don't have clear guidelines of how to protect intellectual properties. So there's some like kind of, um, like you said, not, I don't think of these as black clouds, but I think of these as, no, Those are growing pains Of a heavy lift, right?

This is the heavy lift that has To happen, right? Those are growing pains. Yeah.

We'll, we'll figure that stuff out. Exactly. Security, Nitin, we're, we're out of time, but real quickly for people want to get more info on this survey, where can they go?

So, uh, it is, uh, very well highlighted on our website. Uh, and, uh, is the survey is, is, uh, almost a hundred page report that's available. Um, and I'd encourage kind of, uh, your, uh, viewers To what niton what's the website?

What's the url? Uh, the URLI don't have the handy, uh, but it, it's on the t data Com. com, or you could probably Google the, uh, the uh, n NTT data ai AI study.

Yes. Good. com, you should be able to see this, uh, study.

It's, it's on our front page. Yes. Fantastic.

Midden, I have to jump to our next guest, but thank you so much for coming on and talk. I, as you could tell, I could talk about this all day with you, but we only have a few minutes. Likewise, you the great work.

Come back and visit us. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Alan. Thanks for your time today. Thank you.

Nitin Bajaj, VP Digital Officer offerings and PT data here on Text Drug tv. We'll be right back.