Richard Koh

Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft Singapore

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.

Prior to joining Microsoft, 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, and engineers to catalyse new businesses, products and platforms in Cloud services, the Internet of Things, machine to machine, education and healthcare.

Earlier on in his career, Richard spearheaded Emerging Markets strategy for Microsoft Operations as the operations team unit lead based in Singapore. And in Redmond, Washington, he led product teams as director of technical product management in Microsoft’s Office, Servers & Tools, as well as telecommunication solutions businesses, which led him to be part of the founding product team for Microsoft’s flagship productivity suite – Office 365.

Richard also spent close to 12 years at Hewlett-Packard, with stints at the company in Singapore and in Cupertino/Palo Alto, California, where he gained wide experience in R&D, business development and marketing of emerging Internet/web-services and telecommunications technologies, as well as people and organisation management.

Richard graduated from the National University of Singapore with a Bachelor’s of Science in Computer Science & Information Systems. Richard is married with two children. He loves to work with passionate people who wants to change the world for the better, and enjoys running, skiing/snowboarding, reading, indie movies and tinkering with tech gadgets.