NTT DATA and Microsoft Accelerate Business Innovation with AI-Driven Solutions

TOKYO – November 20, 2024 - NTT DATA, a global digital business and IT services leader, will showcase its AI innovations at Microsoft Ignite, an annual conference for developers, IT professionals and partners. NTT DATA activities emphasize how businesses can achieve more with the power of AI and the Microsoft Cloud. By helping clients to modernize and manage intelligent applications, safeguard business data and accelerate productivity, NTT DATA empowers them to thrive in an increasingly AI-driven world.

As a Microsoft Global Systems Integrator Partner, NTT DATA supports clients in navigating digital transformation, focusing on Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft Azure OpenAI and service capabilities.

The NTT DATA approach delivers substantial business value, enabling clients to quickly access and optimize Microsoft technologies, including Copilot, cloud services, generative AI, analytics and cybersecurity, providing a seamless experience and faster results.

Marv Mouchawar, Head of Global Innovation, NTT DATA, says, "We have a responsibility to foster reliable outcomes with clear business value. NTT DATA helps clients identify new ways to leverage, expand and optimize data. Our dedicated Microsoft services practice codevelops innovative products and joint solutions that combine NTT DATA’s industry expertise with Microsoft’s cloud services."

tsuzumi Launching in the Japanese Market

As part of this joint innovation strategy, NTT DATA today announced the general availability of tsuzumi on Azure through Microsoft’s Model-as-a-Service (MaaS) platform in Japan, from November 20, 2024. tsuzumi is a lightweight, small language model designed to excel in Japanese language processing, with the added capability of handling both Japanese and English.

tsuzumi integrates seamlessly into Azure services, offering users the ability to quickly tune and develop business applications on Azure AI Studio. With a pay-as-you-go pricing model, tsuzumi is highly cost-effective, making it accessible for businesses looking to introduce advanced AI capabilities at scale.

"By collaborating with NTT, we are making the tsuzumi' LLM bilingual model, available in the Azure Model Catalog,” said Stephen Boyle, Global Leader, GSI, ESI and Advisory Partners, at Microsoft. “This model delivers efficient Japanese AI capabilities, that excel in summarization, content generation and information retrieval that makes it easy for customers to build innovative AI solutions."

Leveraging over 40 years of natural language processing technology from NTT Laboratories, tsuzumi is designed to be compact, efficient and multimodal, able to support various business applications. Its ability to be fine-tuned with fewer resources makes it ideal for specific industry needs, driving business efficiency and enabling the creation of AI-powered business applications.

For more information about the service, see the catalogue information on the Microsoft marketplace.

GenAI TechHub Available for Rapid Solutioning

NTT DATA also brings to Microsoft Ignite its asset and accelerator platform, GenAI TechHub (“TechHub”). TechHub hosts a suite of integrated, prequalified generative GenAI prototypes, components, toolkits and solutions to help minimize complexity and risk, while speeding solution adoption.

As businesses wrestle with the realities of GenAI implementation in an environment often clouded with technical debt, TechHub eliminates the challenges of disparate systems, teams and data; voids in standardized, enterprise-quality output; and too-long return-on-investment timelines.

TechHub scales efficiently on Azure and integrates with a variety of leading infrastructure and tools. A standardized, consistent, reusable approach across projects leads to improved governance and cost efficiencies. NTT DATA clients have achieved 40% faster deployments, lowered costs to and improved time to market and ROI through the platform. TechHub includes tailored and scalable features, from interface to core functionalities, as well as end-to-end security and governance with bias and breach mitigation.

Accelerating Legacy Application Modernization with Azure OpenAI

NTT DATA’s Coding platform, designed for rapid and efficient transformations, accelerates legacy application modernization with Azure OpenAI. This solution offers significant benefits to enterprises, including reducing costs and boosting efficiency by automating up to 80% of code generation and transformation tasks, ultimately cutting development costs and improving project efficiency by 40%. With a track record of tested and proven success in large-scale transformations, the platform customizes code transformation to align with unique architectural needs, delivering scalable frameworks without extensive manual intervention.

Seamlessly integrating with Microsoft Azure OpenAI, it ensures enterprise-level security, compliance, and global scalability. Leveraging GenAI capabilities, NTT DATA enables organizations to transform legacy systems faster, potentially reducing time-to-market by up to 50%. Tailored to meet specific enterprise requirements, the platform provides a customized approach, ensuring that the modernization process is in line with each organization’s unique framework and objectives.

Expertise and Outlook

NTT DATA’s expertise in GenAI leverages NTT Group’s research and development (R&D) investments, which include more than 40 years of continuous AI R&D and ranking number 12 among companies with the most GenAI patents worldwide.^* Other strengths include the company’s carefully built ecosystem of partners, global delivery capabilities, and end-to-end expertise that ranges from consultation and strategy development to infrastructure and deployment.

The company adheres to NTT DATA Group's AI Guidelines and will continue to invest and innovate in GenAI to further transform its clients’ and its own operations. This commitment aligns with NTT DATA’s mission to solve diverse business challenges using advanced information technology, and provide new value to society.

^{*World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) (2024). Generative Artificial Intelligence. Patent Landscape Report.}