Deloitte Partner Matthieu Lambert: Visionary thinking and practical execution crucial for technological advancement

Asia Pacific's diverse technological landscape requires a strategic balance of robust infrastructure, AI-ready workforce, and regulatory adaptability.

As Asia Pacific’s digital ecosystem evolves, businesses face the challenge of balancing rapid innovation with cybersecurity and regulatory demands. With advanced technologies reshaping industries, companies must adopt strategic, forward-thinking approaches to stay ahead.

Matthieu Lambert is Partner at Deloitte Consulting, leading the sales for the firm's Microsoft Technology Services Practice in Asia Pacific. Dedicated to delivering impactful cloud and AI-based solutions, his specialised teams empower organisations to enhance their operations and navigate large-scale Technology & Transformation programmes. Their approach ensures that every end-user adopts the implemented technologies and becomes an ambassador for these solutions.

As a judge at the Hong Kong Business Technology Excellence Awards 2025, Matthieu Lambert shared his valuable insights on the region’s technology trends and the key factors driving transformative innovation.

Given your focus on the Asia Pacific markets, what unique opportunities and challenges do you see in this region regarding technology adoption and innovation?

I have been based in Asia Pacific for ten years and I love the diversity of this region in terms of varying levels of technological maturity and adoption. My role at Deloitte Consulting is to expand our Microsoft Technology Services Practice in these markets with diverse industry focusses, specific regulatory requirements, and different maturity levels in their infrastructure. That represents a huge and exciting opportunity to leverage our experience from the past, find synergies, and accelerate innovation faster.

Australia is a mature market where our clients already have advanced infrastructure to embrace innovations and implement the latest AI technologies in finance, healthcare, and agriculture. Whilst there is government support and a skilled workforce, we also see a complex regulatory landscape for emerging technologies due to cyber security concerns with expensive implementation costs that can slow the adoption process.  

On the other hand, Japan presents one of the most advanced technological infrastructures, which supports the adoption of cutting-edge technologies like AI and cloud computing. Their infrastructure provides a solid foundation for businesses to innovate and implement new solutions. They boast a highly educated and skilled workforce, particularly in technology and engineering. However, many Japanese companies, particularly in the manufacturing and finance sectors, rely on outdated IT systems that are difficult to modernise. The demographic challenge also creates a sense of urgency for businesses to adopt new technologies.

Greater China is unique, with Mainland China being highly advanced in the consumer sector and the government implementing impressive AI technologies a whilst ago. With the specific national policies on data residency and recent geopolitical challenges, we have more and more demand from our MNC clients to regionalise their global infrastructures to meet local requirements. We now have a unique Deloitte Consulting workforce specialising in this domain, covering the legal, compliance, and technology aspects. Then there is Hong Kong, where I have lived for eight years. We can consider it as the bridge between China and the world. This bridge provides a channel for many Mainland Chinese consumers looking for stable investments via a booming Insurance and Consumer sectors developed by the Greater Bay Area.

Finally, Southeast Asia—consisting of emerging markets such as Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam, around the mature Singapore—is catching up quickly. This is one of the fastest-growing regions in the world in technological advancements and digital adoption. With a youthful population, robust internet penetration, and increasing investment in digital infrastructure, the region is poised to be a global technology hub. The Leading Cloud Services Providers (CSP) recently announced massive regional investments to develop new data centres to help the population accelerate AI technology adoption. Businesses must navigate diverse regulatory landscapes and address cybersecurity concerns to protect their data and systems with such a fast expansion.

With the increasing importance of cyber security, how do you balance the need for robust security measures with the goal of fostering innovation?

Balancing robust security measures with fostering innovation is crucial. At Deloitte, we prioritise a security-first approach, integrating advanced security protocols and practices into every stage of our cloud and AI solutions. This ensures that our clients can innovate without compromising on security. We also emphasise the importance of a proactive security culture, where continuous monitoring, threat intelligence, and regular security assessments are part of the innovation process.

This solid foundation encourages innovation whilst protecting sensitive data and systems.

What emerging technologies do you believe will have the most significant impact on businesses in the next 5-10 years?

Regarding emerging technologies, I recommend a deep dive into our Tech Trends from Deloitte Insights, which gives excellent perspectives on the fast-changing, innovative world we experience daily.

The lesson learnt from this year is that AI is the common thread of nearly every trend. Moving forward, it will be part of everything we do. As AI evolves, the enterprise focusses on large language models (LLM), giving way to small language models, multimodal models, AI-based simulations, and agents that can execute discrete tasks.

Spatial computing, or Digital Twins, will be part of our lives. Future AI advancements will enhance virtual reality (VR) simulations, eventually leading to seamless spatial computing experiences integrated with AI agents.

After years of software dominance, hardware is reclaiming the spotlight, mainly due to AI’s impact on computing chips and its integration into end-user devices, the Internet of Things (IoT), and robotics. Having the leadership and control of the hardware will make a difference in your AI ability and advancement, and together with code and model optimisation, you will be able to train your AI at lower costs.

Except for AI, the future challenge will be solving cryptography in a quantum age. Quantum computing leads to cybersecurity implications; the potential risk is that a cryptographically relevant quantum computer will someday be able to break much of the current public-key cryptography that businesses rely upon. Once cryptography is broken, it will undermine the processes that establish online sessions, verify transactions, and assure user identity.

How do you see the future of cloud computing evolving, and what should businesses do today to prepare for these changes?

For the last ten years, I have seen cloud computing grow and innovate quickly. We can expect to see more hybrid and multi-cloud environments, where businesses leverage the strengths of different cloud providers to optimise their operations and where AI and ML are standards-embedded services for each workload.

Edge computing will become more mature, bringing computation and data storage closer to the source of data generation, reducing latency, and improving real-time processing capabilities. To prepare for these changes, businesses should invest in scalable and flexible cloud infrastructure, prioritise cloud-native application development, and build a strong cloud governance framework to manage resources effectively. At Deloitte, these aspects are key domains in our Cloud Strategy engagements.

Additionally, businesses should stay updated with technological advancements and continuously adapt to new challenges and opportunities. This includes fostering a culture of continuous organisational learning and encouraging collaboration across different teams to leverage diverse perspectives and expertise.

What leadership qualities do you believe are essential for driving technology innovation in large organisations?

We often engage in large transformation programmes, either modernising a platform or piloting an innovation. Organisations usually miss opportunities to innovate when modernising or not getting past the concept stage when delivering innovation in scale, as the typical Two-Speed IT. Hopefully, it is an old memory.

Driving technology innovation in large organisations requires visionary thinking and practical execution. Key leadership qualities include:

Strategic vision: The ability to foresee industry trends and align technology initiatives with business goals must come from the top and be a key item of the C-Suite agenda. Without this sponsorship, an organisation will fail to innovate.

Champion team: Identify champions from the key value-driven businesses of your organisation, not people from IT only. Incentivise these people, make them part of an Agile team, and give access to the budget owner recurrently in a gamification environment to ensure you regularly release these ideas.

Technical environment: A traditional legacy environment impedes fast-release deployment. A decoupled architecture—in which applications, infrastructure, and data interact with one another through standardised interfaces like APIs and microservices—allows teams to work more independently of one another.

Agile in an agile way: Organisations implementing Agile by considering the different layers of processes and hierarchy developed over the years will struggle. A modern infrastructure and optimised controls must be in place to allow your innovative teams to demonstrate quickly and release fast. Ensure your sprints always deliver value, target your production for your increments, and associate it with your definition of done.

Joint business and IT teams: One of the key features of Agile is the cross-functional team, where members from both industry and IT collaborate closely. Transitioning to Agile involves dismantling organisational silos and promoting open communication and teamwork across previously separated areas.

As a judge at the HKB Technology Excellence Awards, what criteria do you use to evaluate the most innovative and impactful technology solutions?

Thank you again for the privilege of being a judge for the HKB Technology Excellence Awards. Seeing so many innovations in the organisations we work with is exciting. The key criteria to compare these significant projects are Innovation, Business Impact, Scalability, Sustainability, and User Experience.

Ultimately, learning, encouraging, and celebrating such fantastic work is most important. Thank you for making that happen.