AIA Group and The Hong Kong Jockey Club Announced as Winners of the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2021 for Hong Kong

Recognized for their digital initiatives and transformation experienced through the use of Red Hat’s open source solutions

HONG KONG–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the winners of the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2021 for Hong Kong. AIA Group and The Hong Kong Jockey Club were honored today for their inspiring digital transformation journey and innovations using Red Hat solutions.

Open source continues to be an innovation engine for Asia Pacific enterprises by helping them modernize infrastructures, develop applications, and transform digitally. According to Red Hat�s recent State of Enterprise Open Source report, 92 percent of the region’s IT leaders are using enterprise open source today, above the global average of 90 percent.

This year, the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards recognized the technological achievements of 24 organizations in the region for their creative thinking, determined problem solving and innovative use of Red Hat solutions.

The winners were selected based on the impact of their Red Hat deployments to support business goals and company culture, industry, communities, as well as the uniqueness of vision for the project. They displayed how open source tools and culture have helped them to improve productivity, agility and cost savings while empowering them to address future challenges and emerging trends more confidently and effectively.

Winners were recognized in five categories: digital transformation, hybrid cloud infrastructure, cloud-native development, automation and resilience.

Category: Automation

Winner: AIA Group

Headquartered in Hong Kong, AIA Group is the largest independent publicly listed pan-Asian life insurance group. With a presence in 18 markets across Asia, it serves the holders of more than 39 million individual policies and over 16 million participating members of group insurance schemes in the region.

AIA is on a journey of digital transformation. The company is upgrading its technology to world-class modern architecture and systems and making targeted investments in digital enablement tools. It is also embedding data analytics into its business. Altogether, the transformation is enabling AIA to significantly enhance the experience of its customers, distributors, partners and employees. Using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, AIA has automated its infrastructure deployment and configuration processes and has seen a significant improvement.

Category: Automation

Winner: The Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC)

Founded in 1884, The Hong Kong Jockey Club is a world-class racing club that has a unique integrated business model comprising racing and racecourse entertainment, a membership club, responsible sports wagering and lottery, and charities and community contribution.

Through this model, HKJC generates economic and social value for the community and supports the government in combating illegal gambling. HKJC is Hong Kong’s largest single taxpayer and one of the city’s major employers. Its Charities Trust is also one of the world’s top ten charity donors.

The Hong Kong Jockey Club wished to remediate legacy issues to enhance efficiencies, as well as save time and costs on repetitive tasks, in order to focus on providing the best possible customer service.

With Red Hat Consulting and Red Hat Training, HKJC documented and categorized almost 300 workflows, allowing them to identify areas where efficiencies can be improved. HKJC then deployed Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to automate its workflows, freeing up valuable time for employees to focus on higher-value tasks such as customer service.

Its new, standardized environment has helped HKJC streamline processes and better allocate manpower to ensure all workflows are kept up to date. With more time to focus on innovation and customers, the business was able to increase customer satisfaction. Furthermore, new employees are now able to adapt to and follow proper workflows to maintain efficiency.

Provisioning of virtual environments now takes less than three days as compared to more than two weeks. The automation of routine work allowed developers to spend more time on development and less time on deployment.

HKJC also took the opportunity to promote its open culture within the organization. Teams involved in the project now have a better understanding of different workflows across departments, which will facilitate communication and collaboration and ultimately catalyze innovation and build business resilience.

The Automation category highlights projects that most successfully automated processes, workflows, tasks and IT operations to rapidly implement innovative and disruptive technologies and practices.

Supporting Quotes

Marjet Andriesse, vice president and general manager, APAC, Red Hat

“2021 continues to be a year of uncertainty but Asia Pacific organizations are using open source rapidly and effectively to create more business possibilities with digital transformation. They are leveraging technologies like hybrid cloud, data analytics, and edge computing to meet changing market landscapes and enhance customer experiences. Congratulations to this year’s winners, and we hope that Red Hat’s open source solutions will continue to help address the many real challenges our customers face today, and unlock the future for business in Asia Pacific.”

Marcel Malan, head of Group IT Operations, AIA Group

“Technology is core to AIA’s strategic ambitions to provide a leading customer experience, build unrivalled distribution and deliver compelling propositions to our customers, agents and business partners. Leveraging the use of Cloud and automation solutions, we are making a step change in building our technology, digital and analytics capabilities to drive agility across our operations and meet our customers’ evolving needs.”

Neil Whiteing, director, IT Operations, Systems Assurance & Shenzhen Technology Center, Hong Kong Jockey Club

“As a world-class racing club, efficiency and enterprise-wide collaboration are necessary to move forward in our digital transformation journey to better serve our community. Working with Red Hat has allowed us to identify and rectify pain points and areas for improvement in our processes, while also improving interdepartmental communication, enabling us to focus on innovation and customer service.”

Additional Resources

• Learn more about Red Hat Forum Asia Pacific 2021
• Learn more about the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2021

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About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of enterprise open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to deliver reliable and high-performing Linux, hybrid cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies. Red Hat helps customers integrate new and existing IT applications, develop cloud-native applications, standardize on our industry-leading operating system, and automate, secure, and manage complex environments. Award-winning support, training, and consulting services make Red Hat a trusted adviser to the Fortune 500. As a strategic partner to cloud providers, system integrators, application vendors, customers, and open source communities, Red Hat can help organizations prepare for the digital future.

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