After $600m splurge, NCS unifies Australian operations and launches AI-driven brand push

After spending more than AU$600 million on acquisitions, Singtel-owned tech services firm NCS is refocusing its efforts on the Australian market, consolidating its local businesses under a single national entity and launching its first local brand campaign built around artificial intelligence.

The move signals a new chapter for the 45-year-old Singapore-headquartered group, which over the past five years has shifted from a domestic government IT contractor into a regional tech services firm with ambitions to capture a larger share of Australia’s fast-growing enterprise technology market.

NCS entered Australia with a buying spree in 2021 and 2022, acquiring ARQ Group for AU$290m, The Dialog Group for AU$325m, along with Eighty20 Solutions and Riley Solutions for undisclosed sums. Together, the deals created one of the largest regional footprints in cloud consultancy, data solutions and enterprise IT services.

Those four businesses have now been merged under a single NCS Australia banner, with seven offices and around 1,500 employees. To mark the integration, NCS has launched “Challenge Us,” a brand campaign positioning the firm as the partner for enterprises and governments to turn their “too-hard pile” into practical, future-ready solutions.

The campaign was built using AI, symbolising both the scale of transformation projects and the technology’s central role in NCS’s strategy. It will run across digital, outdoor and thought leadership activations in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, deliberately blending consumer-style visibility with B2B engagement.

According to Howie Lau, chief corporate development and synergy officer at NCS, the consolidation was less about rebranding and more about aligning capabilities. “We believe we can handle some of the most complex solutions in Australia,” Lau told Marketing-Interactive. “Challenge Us represents both our breadth of capabilities and the nimbleness to deliver with care and agility. All of us in B2B are consumers. We wanted the brand to be visible on the street, but the executive roundtables and thought leadership are where we go deeper with clients.”

Leading the local team are Tony Bailey (formerly Dialog) as country lead and Tony Walter (ex-IBM) as COO. Known internally as “the two Tonys,” the pair are tasked with bringing local nuance to a global strategy. “For us it’s very important that each market is run by a local leadership team,” Lau said. “Understanding the local culture and requirements is key in our business.”

Betting big on AI

At the core of NCS’s regional strategy is a S$130 million (A$145m) AI investment program announced earlier this year. The company has launched Sunshine.AI, a suite of accelerators and coding platforms, alongside partnerships with Nvidia, Google and AWS.

More than 10,000 staff across its global network have been trained in AI applications, supported by tools like NCS GPT for knowledge management and conversational AI for call centres. But Lau said project work delivers the real edge. “Nothing beats putting a developer on an AI project for six months. The swagger they have when they come out of it is completely different.”

In Australia, he said, AI and digital resilience are converging priorities. “AI can only be as fast and effective as your resilience layer. That includes cyber, data backbone, infrastructure scalability, application interplay and operations. If resilience lags, AI deployments fall apart.”

Competing for market share

Australia’s enterprise IT services market is already crowded with Accenture, Deloitte and Infosys, alongside challengers like Telstra Purple and DXC Technology. Lau said NCS is betting its mix of local leadership and regional scale will resonate with clients. “Unlike some of our peers with 400,000 or 600,000 staff, we’re still very agile. We can deliver on the brand promise of Challenge Us.”

For CMOs and CIOs, the consolidation creates a more coherent story: instead of approaching four separate businesses, clients now face a single NCS Australia proposition spanning cloud migration, AI adoption and cybersecurity. The campaign reframes the conversation from IT outsourcing to business outcomes, with an emphasis on helping boards and executives manage complexity in an AI-driven world.

A brand on the offensive

Lau said the Australian expansion reflects a larger ambition to position NCS as a regional tech powerhouse rather than a Singapore-centric provider. Australia is viewed as the second or third largest IT services market in Asia, making it a natural hub for further APAC growth.

“Clients know disruption is coming - whether it’s AI, cybersecurity or the next wave of digital,” Lau said. “Challenge Us is more than a tagline. It’s an invitation for clients to put their hardest problems on the table and see what we can deliver together.”