AI, data analytics driving FPT's strong APAC growth

FPT is positioning artificial intelligence and data analytics as major drivers of its international expansion as enterprises across APAC shift from AI experimentation towards deploying the technology across core business operations.

The Vietnamese technology services company is observing shifting expectations as organisations increasingly look beyond traditional IT outsourcing and software development capacity to technology partners that can help reshape business models, improve productivity and create new sources of competitive advantage.

The shift is pushing the company towards a more strategic role with customers, said FPT Software Executive Vice President and Chief Digital & Technology Officer, FPT Corporation, Dao Duy Cuong.

"Customers increasingly involve us at the readiness stage, from assessing data foundations, identifying high-value use cases and building an enterprise roadmap," he said.

"Our role is shifting from service provider to co-creator as we help clients redesign how people, data and intelligent systems work together to create new business capabilities."

FPT's expansion comes as companies begin to face a growing divide between investment in AI and the ability to deploy it at scale.

Research conducted by FPT and Forrester found AI agents currently execute 17 per cent of core processes on average, a figure expected to rise to 39 per cent over the next 24 months.

However, just 23 per cent of organisations surveyed have achieved enterprise-wide AI integration and scaling.

Cuong said the challenge is no longer simply proving that AI can work in isolated use cases, but integrating it safely and reliably into the wider enterprise.

"The common issue is that enterprise foundations are not evolving as quickly as AI ambitions," he said.

The research found only 39 per cent of enterprises have made meaningful progress in aligning their AI strategy, governance and operating model.

Integration complexity was identified as the leading barrier, cited by 41 per cent of respondents, while 38 per cent pointed to data readiness issues.

Fragmented data, ageing systems, unclear ownership and governance structures that were not designed for AI are significant barriers preventing organisations from transitioning successful pilots into broader deployment.

FPT says that AI transformation therefore needs to happen alongside modernisation of legacy applications and data environments.

The company has developed a three-layer approach to addressing the challenge, beginning with its CASAN maturity framework, which assesses an organisation's readiness and establishes a transformation roadmap.

This is followed by its FleziPT ecosystem of platforms, talent and technology partnerships, before FPT Digital Foundry is used to industrialise delivery and turn AI initiatives into measurable business outcomes.

The company is also using AI to help modernise ageing IT environments through Flezi NEXT, which extends the approach across applications, data, cloud and managed services.

Partnerships underpin AI push

FPT has been expanding its relationships with leading technology companies as it builds out its AI capabilities.

The company has worked with Microsoft for over a quarter of a century, with its relationship spanning cloud, artificial intelligence and enterprise modernisation.

FPT's engineers hold more than 4200 Microsoft certifications, and it has become Southeast Asia's first Microsoft Enterprise System Integrator to achieve Frontier Partner status.

The company is deploying technologies including Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot and agentic AI, with the goal of equipping up to 20,000 developers with agentic development capabilities over the next three years.

FPT has also joined the OpenAI Partner Network as a Select Partner, while expanding alliances with Anthropic, AWS, Google Cloud and Nvidia.

Cuong said these partnerships were intended to give customers access to leading AI technologies while allowing FPT to provide the engineering and transformation capabilities needed to turn them into operational systems.

"FPT brings the ability to translate partner technologies from pilots into real, measurable outcomes," he said.

FPT cited several deployments, across different sectors, as examples.

For a major Malaysian oil and gas company, it helped modernise multiple applications and consolidate health, safety, security and environmental capabilities into a single platform.

The project reached more than 5000 users, delivered cost savings of up to 25 per cent and identified more than 30 use cases aimed at improving operational and safety insights.

For a major Vietnamese bank, FPT helped build and modernise its data platform, with the financial institution claiming reporting was completed up to 70 per cent faster, decision-making improved by up to 50 per cent and workforce productivity increased by almost 40 per cent.

In Singapore, a gaming company deployed Microsoft AI agents across Microsoft 365, SAP and ServiceNow.

The deployment automated 12 HR and finance workflows, reduced cycle times by more than 50 per cent and reached almost 2700 users.

APAC demand increases

FPT is seeing strong demand for AI services across SEA, Australia and Hong Kong, with customers increasingly connecting AI to operational data and enterprise systems rather than pursuing standalone experiments.

Demand is spanning multiple industries, including aviation, energy, banking and financial services, healthcare and manufacturing.

One oil and gas company in Southeast Asia, for example, deployed an AI system capable of monitoring personal protective equipment compliance in real time.

The system can identify violations in less than two seconds, allowing operators to intervene across hazardous sites.

In Hong Kong's insurance sector, FPT developed an AI-powered super app for a major insurance group integrating onboarding, policy management, claims, health insights and wellness programmes.

The platform supports more than 9.2 million online users, with 96 per cent of customer services digitally transformed and more than 95 per cent of policies issued online.

Australia is also emerging as an important market for the company.

FPT recently worked with a major Australian health technology provider to modernise a widely used radiology information system, migrating it to cloud, web and mobile platforms while incorporating AI and advanced analytics.

The initiative has reached more than 200,000 users across more than 700 clinic locations, with the modernised system improving accessibility, reducing clinician workloads and increasing productivity.

These examples reflect a broader change in how enterprises are approaching AI, according to Cuong.

"The common pattern is a shift from general-purpose pilots toward AI connected to operational data and enterprise systems, with clear controls and measurable outcomes," he said.

AI maturity remains limited

Cuong does not believe AI maturity can be neatly divided along geographic lines.

The biggest differences are between organisations that have established the foundations needed to scale AI and those that remain focused on isolated experimentation, not necessarily between different markets.

Only 26 per cent of decision-makers surveyed by FPT and Forrester consider their organisations AI-mature.

More mature organisations tend to have aligned AI strategies, clear ownership and governance structures, stronger data and technology foundations, and the ability to measure and repeatedly scale successful use cases.

FPT's key measure of maturity is whether an organisation can repeat what it has learned.

"The practical test is repeatability: can an organisation use what it learned from its first deployment to launch the next ten faster, more securely and at a lower marginal cost?" Cuong said.

"That is when AI becomes an enterprise capability."