This new era, as Colony notes, threatens to upend legacy business models and create opportunities for those agile enough to adapt.
Nowhere is this transformation more consequential than in Asia, where governments, enterprises, and technology giants are poised to shape the rules and reap the rewards of the AI revolution.
As US antitrust policy appears set to favour "Buy" and "Block" strategies, Asian governments face a critical choice: how to foster domestic AI innovation while preventing market dominance by either US tech giants or well-funded Asian conglomerates.
Frederic Giron, VP and senior research director at Forrester, urges a nuanced approach, suggesting Asian governments resist the temptation to either fully isolate their markets or allow unrestricted foreign access.
"Instead, they should create a 'graduated sovereignty' model that incentivises domestic innovation, enables regional cooperation, and manages global integration on their own terms. In other words, different rules for different players based on their impact, not their origin." Fred Giron
He advocates fast-track approvals and government contracts for domestic AI start-ups, market access for regional partners who hire locally and share technology, and strict data processing and transparency requirements for global giants.
With AI-native competitors unlikely to emerge until late 2026 or 2027, Giron warns that Asian policymakers have about 12–18 months to set these rules before the market reshapes itself.
"The key is avoiding rigid blanket bans that kill innovation while preventing any single player, domestic or foreign, from controlling critical AI infrastructure. Countries that get this balance right in 2026 will write the rules for the next decade of AI competition," he continues.
Leapfrogging legacy systems: The AI-native opportunity
For many Asian economies, especially those in ASEAN, that are still reliant on Western ERP and CRM systems, the rise of AI-native enterprise software presents a unique chance to bypass outdated infrastructure.
"AI-native ERP/CRM alternatives promise cheaper, more adaptable systems than traditional enterprise software," comments Samuel Higgins, VP and principal analyst at Forrester. "The opportunity is clear: bypass ageing, expensive Western enterprise software and build sovereign AI-powered business systems from scratch."
However, he cautions that the risks are significant, noting that failures in enterprise software can hurt operations. "Companies and public sector organisations should run parallel pilots with AI-native solutions for non-critical functions while maintaining legacy systems, then migrate based on proven performance," he continues.
This pragmatic approach aligns with Gartner's recommendation for "bimodal IT"—running both legacy and next-generation systems in parallel to manage risk while enabling innovation.
From dependence to differentiation
AI's insatiable demand for compute power has so far entrenched NVIDIA's dominance in the GPU market. But competition is not far as Asian hardware giants and upstarts mount realistic challenges to the incumbent.
Giron cites Chinese firms like Huawei, which already claim their 910B AI chip surpasses NVIDIA's A100. He suggests, however, that government R&D funding focus on specialised niches rather than direct competition: funding edge AI chips, inference-optimised architectures, and sovereign foundry capabilities for national security applications.
He points to Japan's Fujitsu as a model, with its AMD-based Monaka chips that claim "2x faster performance and better cooling than existing GPUs."
"The goal isn't displacing NVIDIA entirely but establishing competitive alternatives in specific use cases where cost or performance advantages are achievable," concludes Giron.
This reflects the growing consensus among industry analysts who argue that regional specialisation and government-backed innovation will be critical for Asia to carve out a sustainable share of the global AI hardware market.
Seizing the AI implementation boom
Colony predicts a surge in demand for AI implementation services, with annual growth rates of 5–6%. Can Asia scale its talent pool fast enough to capture this opportunity?
Cautiously optimistic, Giron believes Asia is well-placed, but warns the window is narrow. The region already fields roughly 15 million IT services professionals. It is attracting multi-billion-dollar AI cloud investments from Microsoft, Google and NVIDIA, giving it the scale and infrastructure to retrain a significant number of engineers in AI by 2026.
"On the other hand, it still faces a yawning mid-senior talent gap, tight GPU supply and the risk that quick certificate programmes create 'paper' experts," observes Giron.
He stresses that success will depend on "converting legacy-support staff into true AI specialists, harmonising regional responsible-AI standards and ensuring training subsidies are tied to real project deployments, not just classroom hours."
This view is echoed by Deloitte, which recently warned that "skills transformation, not just skills training," will determine which regions lead in AI services.
The TuringBots era
The rise of AI-powered coding assistants—such as TuringBots—will rapidly eliminate junior programming roles.
"The TuringBots era means junior coding work will vanish fast, so Asian policymakers must redesign the career ladder rather than just chase productivity gains," warns Higgins.
He recommends policies such as tying cloud-credit and R&D incentives to teams that pair apprentice developers with TuringBots, and funnelling at-risk programmers through large-scale micro-credential sprints, citing India's FutureSkills Prime and Singapore's AI Apprenticeship Programme as leading examples.
Samuel Higgins
"Countries could also pilot 'digital national service' programmes where young graduates work on government AI projects paired with TuringBots, creating structured apprenticeships while delivering public value. Finally, reward firms that redeploy graduates into MLOps, domain-specific prompt engineering and AI-security roles instead of trimming headcount." Samuel Higgins
He expects "India and Singapore to lead on talent-pipeline policy," while noting China's aggressive investments in domestic computing, AI education, and regulatory frameworks that keep humans in the loop.
Asia's defining decade
As the Seventh Wave gathers momentum, Asia's choices in the next 12–18 months will shape the region's technological destiny. By embracing "graduated sovereignty," leapfrogging legacy systems, investing in differentiated hardware, scaling genuine AI talent, and proactively managing workforce disruption, Asia can not only weather the coming storm but set the global standard for AI-enabled growth.
As Giron puts it: "Countries that get this balance right in 2026 will write the rules for the next decade of AI competition."
The Seventh Wave is here. Asia's response will determine who surfs—and who sinks.
Circling back to what started this post is the closing recommendation from Forrester's CEO:
"What are the best strategies for CIOs? 1) Beware legacy vendors bearing AI gifts — they are faking it until they can make it, pretending that their platforms can transition to the Seventh Wave; 2) increase your artificial intelligence quotient so that you and your team can sort the reality from the fantasy that will be assaulting you from your legacy suppliers and from startups; and 3) if you can afford to delay, you may want to put off big software changes until AI finance, AI CRM, and AI ERP offerings become available from AI-native vendors. That won’t happen until late 2026 and 2027." George Colony
Allan is Group Editor-in-Chief for CXOCIETY writing for FutureIoT, FutureCIO and FutureCFO. He supports content marketing engagements for CXOCIETY clients, as well as moderates senior-level discussions and speaks at events.
Previous Roles
He served as Group Editor-in-Chief for Questex Asia concurrent to the Regional Content and Strategy Director role.
He was the Director of Technology Practice at Hill+Knowlton in Hong Kong and Director of Client Services at EBA Communications.
He also served as Marketing Director for Asia at Hitachi Data Systems and served as Country Sales Manager for HDS’ Philippine. Other sales roles include Encore Computer and First International Computer.
He was a Senior Industry Analyst at Dataquest (Gartner Group) covering IT Professional Services for Asia-Pacific.
He moved to Hong Kong as a Network Specialist and later MIS Manager at Imagineering/Tech Pacific.
He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electronics and Communications Engineering degree and is a certified PICK programmer.
