India’s TCS to train 25,000 associates on Microsoft’s Azure Open AI

Indian IT services giant, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has deepened its partnership with internet major Microsoft and will train 25,000 associates to get them certified on Microsoft’s Azure Open AI.

“Tata Consultancy Services has deepened its partnership with Microsoft by announcing plans to significantly scale its Azure Open AI expertise, and launching its new Generative AI Enterprise Adoption offering on Microsoft Cloud to help customers jumpstart their generative AI journey to power their growth and transformation,” TCS said in a regulatory filing Thursday.

TCS’ Microsoft Business Unit (MBU) already comprises over 50,000 AI-trained associates, the filing added.

“Generative AI upends how enterprises can grow revenue, create new innovations, and get more work done— it’s a game-changer that has the potential to do all of this faster, better, and more cost-effectively,” said Siva Ganesan, Head, Microsoft Business Unit, TCS. “With TCS Generative AI Enterprise Adoption, our joint customers can unlock new growth opportunities and embark on an exciting journey of innovation – guided by our AI expertise and in-depth knowledge of Microsoft Cloud.”

Microsoft this February announced a new multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. While the Satya Nadella-led company had not disclosed specifics, various media reports pointed out that the investment could be as much as $10 billion.

In 2019, Microsoft said it would invest $1 billion in OpenAI to jointly develop new technologies for the Azure platform and to expand OpenAI’s AI capabilities. In return, OpenAI had agreed to license some of its intellectual property to Microsoft, according to a TechCrunch report.

“TCS’ Generative AI Enterprise Adoption on Azure Offering provides customers with the information and resources they need to harness the power of generative AI to accelerate innovation and business growth,” said Kelly Rogan, CVP, Global System Integrators and Advisory Partners, Microsoft.

TCS’ Generative AI Enterprise Adoption offering uses a proprietary transformation framework to bring together TCS’ contextual knowledge and its expertise in Azure Open AI service to help clients enhance customer experience, launch new business models, grow revenue, and enhance productivity.

Using this framework, TCS said the company and client teams will jointly ideate on AI-led solutions to address their pressing business problems, develop proofs of concept on Azure Open AI, create solution roadmaps, gather stakeholder feedback, train the models, build sufficiently strong guardrails and deploy the solutions.