TCS Expands Google Cloud Relationship With Vertex Generative AI

‘What is really special is the fact that we are bringing the best from Google and TCS to solve enterprise customer needs from an AI perspective. TCS brings to the table a deep, deep knowledge and understanding of the clients’ context and the ability to do assessments and build roadmaps for AI adoption in which generative AI would be a focus area,’ says Nidhi Srivastava, vice president and global head of TCS’ Google Business Unit.

Nidhi Srivastava

Tata Consultancy Services this week unveiled an expanded relationship with Google Cloud under which the global solution provider will use the Google Vertex AI generative AI platform as part of its designing and deployment of customized business solutions.

The news comes at a time when generative AI is dominating the headlines, but not necessarily from an enterprise point of view, said Nidhi Srivastava, vice president and global head of the Google business unit of TCS, with headquarters in Mumbai, India.

“What is really special is the fact that we are bringing the best from Google and TCS to solve enterprise customer needs from an AI perspective,” Srivastava told CRN. “TCS brings to the table a deep, deep knowledge and understanding of the clients’ context and the ability to do assessments and build roadmaps for AI adoption in which generative AI would be a focus area.”

[Related: Cohesity, Google Cloud Team Up For Vertex AI Data Protection ]

TCS also adds rapid experimentation and proof of concepts on the Google generative AI offerings, Srivastava said.

“That is something we offer through what we call the Cloud Lab on Google Cloud, because the whole journey for AI is going to be executed in sprints in a very agile-like manner,” she said. “That identifying use cases, prioritizing them for the customers, and then building the library or backlog of use cases is where TCS comes in.”

Google Cloud offers the kind of privacy that enterprises require, Srivastava said.

“Google Cloud offers you tenancy, so that your data is compartmentalized,” she said. “That’s something unique from a platform perspective. And the other thing is, Google has been a leader in AI and what they offer in terms of price performance and affordability for enterprise customers.”

TCS brings service expertise, knowledge of the customer, and deep relationships, Srivastava said.

“This journey will require a lot of change management, a lot of engagement with business, as well as the tech,” she said. “TCS brings in that assurance of having worked with the customer for many, many years.”

At the same time, businesses are being swept by a wave of generative AI large language models that have crept into their vocabulary, Srivastava said.

“How will you do it responsibly?” she said. “I spoke about the data privacy and data security aspect, but there is fairness and bias and other concerns, with CEOs, CIOs, the chief technology officers, everybody weighing these things. Having a service provider like TCS, a partner like TCS, makes a difference.”

While TCS has close relationships with the top hyperscalers including Azure and AWS, its first generative AI offering is on Google Cloud, Srivastava said.

TCS’ Google Vertex AI generative AI business is already being offered to clients, she said.

“In fact, we are at a point of completing one of our engagements for a large media company,” she said. “We’ve gone through the whole cycle of doing the assessment, we did the use case prioritization. There are use cases such as journalist assist, how to create headlines, where the generative AI potential is going to be experimented or tested through proof of concept. So yes, so we’ve already started offering these services to our clients.”

TCS did not need to make new investments in personnel to expand its Google Vertex AI generative AI capabilities, Srivastava said.

“We have made very significant investments in terms of training our people on Google Cloud and upskilling,” she said. “We have about 25,000 people who are certified on GCP skills. So a lot of our talent is in-house. This is because TCS has been working on AI for many, many years. Yes, generative AI is very much the flavor of the moment, but we have data scientists, model trainers, model developers. Those people have been part of our business for the last several years. So we have done a little bit of hiring, but most of it is upskilling, cross-skilling, and continuing to build the AI bench that we already had.”