BMW Brilliance Automotive, China Southern Asset Management, Chint Anneng Digital Power, and Morgan Stanley Acknowledged for Creative Use of Open Source at the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2023 for China

Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the winners of the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2023 for China. Red Hat honored the achievements of BMW Brilliance Automotive, China Southern Asset Management, Chint Anneng Digital Power and Morgan Stanley for their use of Red Hat solutions to foster innovation, showcase their ingenuity, and elevate customer experiences in an ever-evolving business environment.

In an environment of economic fluctuations and technological upheavals, Red Hat continues to explore the theme of “Explore what’s next” at this year’s Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards. This year’s accolades celebrate the accomplishments of organizations in adapting to today’s uncertain landscape, proudly recognizing the digital transformation achievements of 31 organizations from 13 countries in the region. By harnessing the power of open source creatively, these organizations propel themselves forward while prioritizing unforgettable customer experiences. Their resilience, strategic thinking, and use of Red Hat solutions have enabled them to overcome new business challenges and stay one step ahead of evolving customer demands.

Amid growing uncertainty, innovation remains a priority for businesses. According to the Red Hat 2023 Global Tech Outlook, businesses continue to rank innovation as a powerful differentiator, enabling organizations to rise above their competitors and forge their unique path to success. The awards’ five categories focus on key technologies that can help businesses stand out: Digital Transformation, Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure, Cloud-native Development, Automation, and Resilience.

The winners were selected based on the positive impact their Red Hat deployments had on their business goals. They showcase the possibilities of open source, pushing the boundaries of business processes, productivity, innovation, and resilience.

Category: Digital Transformation and Resilience
Winner: BMW Brilliance Automotive
Established in May 2003, as a joint venture between the BMW Group and Brilliance China Automotive Holdings Ltd., BMW Brilliance Automotive Ltd. (BBA) oversees the research and development, procurement, production, sales, and after-sales services of BMW automobiles in China. BBA is dedicated to providing sustainable premium personal travel services and leads in promoting sustainability across the entire value chain in the Chinese automotive industry. BBA operates a cutting-edge production facility in Shenyang, with additional offices in Beijing and Shanghai. They also have a subsidiary, LingYue Digital Information Technology Co., Ltd., with offices in Beijing and Nanjing. The company employs nearly 26,000 people and collaborates with around 430 local suppliers.

As a global and domestic leader in digital transformation, BBA takes the lead in the industry by using Red Hat OpenShift to decouple its industrial control systems. This achievement involves successfully containerizing traditional industrial control logic and deploying it onto standard PC servers. Not only does this significantly reduce future costs related to the construction and management of industrial control systems, but it also unifies the technology stacks in the fields of operational technology (OT), industrial internet of things (IIOT), and industrial information technology (IT). This streamlines the integration of data, providing the essential foundation for realizing next-generation industrial digital technologies such as extensive predictive maintenance, digital twin, and distributed manufacturing execution systems (MES).

Category: Digital Transformation and Cloud-Native Development
Winner: China Southern Asset Management
Southern Asset Management Co., Ltd. (Southern Asset Management) is one of China’s first domestic asset management companies that was approved by the China Securities Regulatory Commission. Through sustained and stable investment performance and comprehensive professional client services, Southern Asset Management has gained recognition and trust from a wide range of fund investors, social security councils, and pension and institutional clients – maintaining its place at the forefront of the industry.

As one of the top companies in the industry, Southern Asset Management recognizes that digital and intelligent transformation is an industry trend, and building an in-house information-rich, intelligent asset management system is one of the core elements essential for supporting the rapid growth of the business. Using Red Hat's open source application ecosystem, Southern Asset Management has implemented various software resources, including Red Hat OpenShift, which helped them successfully transition from Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to Platform as a Service (PaaS). This transition enables the company's developers to focus on business functionality development without the need to address hardware, network, and related hardware and software issues. Additionally, it increased application development efficiency, reduced system maintenance complexity, and enhanced system fault recovery capabilities, providing robust support for the company's in-house construction of a digital/intelligent asset management system.

Category: Digital Transformation and Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure
Winner: Chint Anneng Digital Power
Guided by the two major national strategies of "2060 Carbon Neutrality" and "Rural Revitalization," Chint Anneng actively explores emerging markets and focuses on providing comprehensive solutions for cooperative development, sales, surveying and design, installation, and after-sales operation and maintenance of rooftop photovoltaic systems for rural users. As a household photovoltaic industry company, Chint Anneng has accumulated over 1 million users, with a market share of over 30%.

With the rapid growth in demand for household photovoltaics, there is a pressing need to enhance Chint Anneng’s digital capabilities in marketing, services, operations, and asset management. The organization initiated the Chint Anneng Next-Generation Business Operations Platform project to create agile and efficient service capabilities to adapt to rapid business growth and respond swiftly to industry demands – with the goal of expanding globally. It became imperative to adopt a hybrid multicloud approach and collaborating with Red Hat enabled Chint Anneng to facilitate open collaboration between its developers and various cloud vendors, leading the way for innovative development in the photovoltaic sector.

Category: Automation
Winner: Morgan Stanley Management Service
Morgan Stanley has over 80,000 employees worldwide, primarily engaged in investment banking, securities, wealth management, and investment management. Established for 88 years, the company has offices in over 42 countries and regions globally. In May 2023, Morgan Stanley received approval from the China Securities Regulatory Commission to establish Morgan Stanley Futures (China) Co., Ltd., becoming one of the first international financial services companies to set up a wholly-owned futures company domestically. In July 2023, Morgan Stanley International Bank (China) Limited received regulatory approval to commence its general category derivative product trading business.

While continuously expanding its range of financial services and products, Morgan Stanley implemented enterprise-level infrastructure management to achieve digital transformation and maintain exceptional service standards. Using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, Morgan Stanley established a comprehensive set of automated operations solutions to address the challenges related to the rapid expansion of infrastructure resources and the limited availability of human resources in IT resource management.

The Digital Transformation category recognizes organizations that have successfully made the transition into a truly digital enterprise, overcoming and addressing business challenges with digitalization.

The Automation category celebrates organizations that have effectively harnessed automation to transform their organizational processes, workflows, and tasks.

The Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure category showcases organizations that have demonstrated creative and collaborative use of public, private, and open cloud deployments.

The Cloud-Native Development category highlights organizations that have effectively used agile methodologies to speed up the innovation and development of successful business applications that have made an impact on customers.

The Resilience category showcases organizations that have successfully displayed agility and resilience amidst the changing conditions to help its customers address the new normal using Red Hat technology.

Supporting Quotes
Marjet Andriesse, senior vice president and general manager, APJ, Red Hat
“As the business landscape continues to change in 2023, the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2023 celebrates the creative successes and achievements of our customers. Organizations today are increasingly turning to capabilities like data analytics to embark on transformation initiatives and cloud security to protect their businesses. Furthermore, they have to manage all these while addressing tightening resources and manpower. That is why open source continues to be a game-changer for businesses, giving them the flexibility and resilience to adopt technologies, both existing and emerging, to craft their own unique path to success.”

Jiang Hua, Head of IT Order to Delivery, BMW Brilliance Automotive Ltd.
“The disconnect between Operational Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT) has long been a hindrance to the digital transformation of the manufacturing industry. This divide has made it more challenging for manufacturing enterprises to embrace digitalization compared to other sectors. BBA, using Red Hat OpenShift, has successfully transitioned their PLC, Human Machine Interface (HMI), and other automation systems into microservices. This groundbreaking move at the platform level effectively dismantles the barriers between automation and information systems, significantly reducing the costs of future automation system development and easing the implementation of flexible manufacturing. BMW believes that this technological breakthrough will serve as a pivotal turning point for the manufacturing industry's journey towards a higher dimension of digital transformation.”

Yang Dongbo, Co-General Manager and Executive Director, China Southern Asset Management Digital/Intelligent Science and Technology Department
“As a leading asset management company, Southern Asset Management firmly pursues a differentiated path through independent research and development. By adopting Red Hat OpenShift, Southern Asset Management has fully embraced cloud-native architecture and completed the transition from Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) to PaaS for its internal IT platform. The new cloud-native architecture enhances software development flexibility and iteration efficiency, enabling us to deliver systems to business units more rapidly. This has provided strong support for building a competitive edge and responding to market changes within the company.”

Chen Yongchao, IT Manager, Chint Anneng Digital Power
“Chint Anneng is committed to global green emission reduction goals and meeting China’s national goals for sustainable development, including peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060. We are actively working towards the popularization of photovoltaic technology and products, and our partnership with Red Hat enables us to meet these objectives while driving business growth and responding to industry demands.”

Zhu Jinhui, Head of Enterprise Computing at Morgan Stanley's Information Technology Unit in China
“In order to meet increasing China business demands and adhere to the high standards we hold ourselves to, it became crucial to optimize existing IT infrastructure and redirect more human resources and investments towards business innovation. We have obtained platform-based management capabilities in the automation field through a complete set of automated operation and maintenance solutions. This helped the company to achieve efficient internal collaboration and successfully establish scalable IT resource management capabilities, enabling greater potential for technological and business innovation.”