Building narrow Al models for specific uses: HCLTech

HCL Technologies is seeing a steady rise in enterprise demand for generative AI (artificial intelligence), as well as cloud deployment and expansion of 5G.

- Shouvik Das

In an interview, Kalyan Kumar, global chief technology officer and head of ecosystems at the software services provider, underlined how businesses are finding early use cases for generative AI, what the metaverse hype cycle has transformed into, and why consumer technology markets are ahead of the enterprise tech adoption curve. Edited excerpts:

Given the slowdown in tech spending across India’s IT services industry, what are the key tech adoption trends that HCL Technologies is seeing among clients?

The evolution of cloud deployment models continues to happen. We’re also looking at an explosion of 5G and edge technologies. We also think connectivity at scale is the other big trend. Quality of access to infrastructure and networks is becoming a fundamental piece. Limitless experiences are also going beyond the metaverse—the latter is something that got overhyped in between, but it’s about the experience and how we want to consume experiences across AR, VR, MR and XR. Cybersecurity is becoming more relevant and a part of our fabric.

Then, there is the power of AI. The way I look at it, AI is tied to the cloud. The latter creates the fabric for data, and you need data for AI. Within AI, a small subset that’s making a lot of noise is generative AI, which is taking the focus away from a lot of other core things around AI.