Amidst the AI revolution, e27 presents a new series showcasing how organisations embrace AI in their operations.
As the Managing Director of Equinix South Asia, Yee May Leong oversees its business strategy in the region, including its sustainability initiatives. Her role involves advancing the digital transformation of businesses to align with Singapore’s ambition to become a leading digital hub in Asia.
Leong joined Equinix in 2019 and brings over 35 years of ICT experience working in companies such as IBM, Lotus, F5 Networks, and Orange Business Services. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in mathematics, specialising in computer science, from the University of Waterloo in Canada and completed an advanced management program at Harvard Business School.
In this edition, Leong shares how Equinix has embraced Artificial Intelligence.
Edited excerpts:
How do you perceive the AI revolution and its potential impact on your industry and workforce?
There are many ways to look at Artificial Intelligence. From our business perspective alone, AI has a significant impact and is transforming how we conduct business. It has improved our efficiency by automating some of our internal processes, continually driving innovation from many of our teams and enhancing our customer experiences.
From the perspective of what we solve for our customers, AI requires another ecosystem to meet ESG and innovation needs. The current generation of generative AI requires a large amount of data or capacity — it needs quality datasets to contextualise and learn from.
At the same time, processing all that data requires significantly higher levels of parallel computing power than conventional workloads, which creates infrastructure management challenges. Platform Equinix is designed to help IT infrastructure teams tackle those challenges, freeing their organisational resources to realise the value of AI solutions quicker.
AI has the potential to spur innovation and unravel efficiencies in every corner of business or industry. Organisations must learn and adapt to AI or lose their competitive edge in the long run. Simply put, an organisation with a more efficient AI-enabled workforce will be an overwhelming force against competitors.
All this starts from understanding how AI can help their business to build the right digital infrastructure to support those data, AI applications and ESG needs. Identifying the right partners with green data centres and fast interconnects is just as important.
Can you share specific examples of how AI has been integrated into your workforce to streamline operations or drive innovation?
We use AI in multiple contexts in our operations. Even before the pandemic, Equinix had implemented an AI-powered chatbot to assist its employees in resolving IT issues.
By using the chatbot to analyse problems, from password issues, unlocking accounts, filling out forms, or finding conference rooms and more, employees can save time on these tasks and focus on more rewarding projects. If not resolved, the queries are rerouted to the right experts with a 96 per cent accuracy that it reaches the right group.
Artificial Intelligence is also tied to our business transformation, particularly in forecasting. For example, once a data centre is built, we use AI to predict its capacity, which then helps us optimise our workforce, inventory and, most importantly, energy resources needed for the infrastructure.
We also encourage customers’ adoption of AI, including automation processes and management of their IT equipment. For example, we offer automated notifications to remind customers to clean their data centre cages properly and comply with safety policies. This keeps customers informed about protecting their equipment and maximising energy efficiency.
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We also provide automated interconnection opportunity maps. These allow our customers to maximise the value proposition from Platform Equinix® and make the most of our robust, global network.
What challenges or concerns did you encounter when implementing AI technologies within your organisation, and how did you address them?
AI has become more prominent recently, thanks to the ChatGPT boom last year. But Equinix has long realised the importance and power of AI as it has become one of our foremost business imperatives for a while now.
One of our challenges was around talent. Finding and grooming the right talents took us some time, and we are not alone. According to ManpowerGroup, a staggering 77 per cent of employers are experiencing difficulties filling job vacancies, marking the highest talent shortage in 17 years.
In Singapore, according to a recently released report on job vacancies in 2022 by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), software and applications managers ranked sixth, whilst systems analysts ranked eighth in terms of vacancies.
We have always believed that investing in tech talents will pay off. Therefore, we have implemented several programs dedicated to employing and upskilling our existing talent pool on AI technology so that they could creatively develop, troubleshoot and ensure the process falls within regulatory guidelines and practices.
How do you ensure transparency and uphold ethical considerations in using AI technologies within your organisation to mitigate privacy concerns?
Equinix believes that the responsible approach to AI is rooted in integrity. Firstly, data security and privacy are key so that the AI data inputs are clean and not corrupted. Meanwhile, good data compliance and governance are necessary layers of soundboard and transparency to ensure good-quality datasets. This is because the data, computation, and quality of context in the data affect the outcome of the result.
We lay the foundation with our team to uphold this practice because we are dedicated to using AI models to maximise business value for our customers.
How do you envision the future collaboration between humans and AI? What role do you see AI playing in augmenting human capabilities?
At Equinix, people and AI are complementary to each other. The creativity and innovation behind the technology or solutions come from humans, while AI amplifies those solutions to scale and at speed. Similarly, we will need more talent in the workforce to better understand AI. Our vision is for an efficient AI-enabled workforce rather than a workforce filled with AI applications.
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As more of the world looks to bridge the gap between human capabilities with the advancement of AI, we believe companies will look to Everything as a Service (XaaS) to support their digital AI transformations. XaaS platforms provide seamless access to AI as a service hosted on cloud infrastructure and a growing suite of software tools and digital solutions that can be utilised on demand.
Our Platform Equinix runs on high-performing distributed AI infrastructure to enable IT teams to overcome AI complexity and manage massive data volumes, freeing up business units to focus on critical work.
We believe a world where humans can leverage AI to achieve objectives in a much shorter phase is already possible. With further innovations and developments, we look forward to how human ingenuity can enable more industry-changing solutions when augmented by AI.
What advice would you give to other company founders looking to leverage Artificial Intelligence in their workforce?
AI can improve many internal processes in the back office, enabling employees to focus on higher-value needs. Similarly, AI enables organisations to find fit for roles without bias, meaning businesses can find the best talent for the job.
Ultimately, it is a journey. This journey is limited only by our own imaginations. Like any past technological advancement, Artificial Intelligence is only a tool to help us achieve our goals.
In summary:
- Understand and appreciate how AI can help you achieve those goals
- Plan and develop the right infrastructure and talent within your organisation
- Look for the right partners to help you reach goals at scale and speed
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