Richard Koh
Chief Technology & Customer Success Lead
Microsoft Singapore

Richard Koh is the Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft Singapore. In this role, he is responsible for engaging with key executive leaders across government, industry and academia; bringing in the macro technology landscape; and helping customers leverage technology innovations for their digital transformation. His focus areas include guiding technology policies, standards, legal and regulatory matters, as well as security, privacy and compliance decisions. 

Always passionate about the promises that the Internet and cloud computing can bring, and with a keen eye on business strategies, product development and marketing, Richard’s professional experience spans the Asia and North America regions, as well as multiple functional areas including research & development, IT, product management, marketing, business development and sales operations. 

Richard started his technology career at Hewlett-Packard, with stints at the company first in Singapore, then in Cupertino & Palo Alto, California, where he gained wide experience in R&D, business development and product management of emerging Internet/web-services and telecommunications technologies, as well as people and global organizations management. 

After 12 years at Hewlett-Packard, he joined Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, where he led product teams as director of technical product management in Microsoft’s Office business, Servers & Tools business, as well as telecommunication solutions businesses, andeventually became part of the founding product team for Microsoft’s flagship productivity cloud services suite – Office 365. He then relocated to Singapore, and spearheaded Emerging Markets strategy for Microsoft Operations as the operations team unit lead working on Microsoft’s cloud services launch efforts in China. 

Before rejoining Microsoft Singapore in his current role, he was the senior director for Emerging Businesses & Strategy under Group Enterprise at Singtel. There, he led a team of intrapreneurs, products managers, product marketers, architects, software engineers and data center engineers to catalyze new businesses, products and platforms in Cloud services, the Internet of Things, machine to machine, education and healthcare. 

Richard currently serves on the board of directors of Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs’ Home Team Science & Technology Agency (HTX), NTUC Income, and the National Heritage Board (NHB). He also serves on Sentosa Development Corporation’s Digital Transformation Advisory Panel, Singapore’s Ministry of Social and Family Development’s National Council of Social Service’s (NCSS) Industry Digital Plan Advisory Panel, Singapore Management University’s School of Accounting’s Data Analytics Advisory Board Member as well as an advisory member of Singapore ITE’s (Institute of Technical Education) Electronics and Info-Comm Technology Academic Advisory Committee. He is also the immediate past Chairman of SGTech’s AI & HPC Chapter. 

Graduated from the National University of Singapore with a Bachelor’s of Science in Computer Science & Information Systems, Richard is a proud father of two rambunctious boys. He loves to work with passionate people who wants to change the world for the better and enjoys running, skiing, reading, action sci-fi movies and tinkering with tech gadgets.