Cathay Pacific and FTLife Named as Winners at the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2022 for Hong Kong

Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the winners of the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2022 for Hong Kong. Cathay Pacific and FTLife were honored at Red Hat Summit: Connect today for leveraging Red Hat solutions to enhance their agility and customer experiences in an evolving business landscape.

In line with this year’s theme of “Explore what’s next,” the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards celebrates organizations’ ability to adapt to rapidly changing business environments, transform their business models and deliver better experiences to customers with open source. This year, the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards recognizes the digital transformation success of 26 organizations in the region for their creative use of Red Hat solutions to stay ahead of industry trends and customer needs.

In today’s fast changing business environment, agility and innovation are crucial for business success. According to Red Hat’s State of Enterprise Open Source 2022 report, 95 percent of Asia Pacific enterprises say that open source is important to their organization’s overall enterprise infrastructure software strategy, helping them stay nimble and respond to changing customer demands in the long run.

The winners showcased the positive impact of their Red Hat deployments to support their business vision, workplace culture, industry and communities. They demonstrate how open source tools and culture have the power to accelerate business processes, enhance productivity, stimulate innovation and address future challenges.

The awards comprise five categories: Digital Transformation, Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure, Cloud-native Development, Automation and Resilience.

Category: Digital Transformation and Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure

Winner: Cathay Pacific Airways Limited (Cathay Pacific)

Cathay Pacific was founded in Hong Kong in 1946. The Group has been deeply committed to its home base for more than 75 years and remains so, making substantial investments to develop Hong Kong as one of the world’s leading international aviation centers. Cathay Pacific, with its subsidiaries HK Express and Air Hong Kong, was the world’s eighth-largest carrier of international passengers, and the third-largest carrier of international air cargo prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to IATA’s 2019 World Air Transport Statistics. 

The Hong Kong airline had to enhance its operational agility to adapt to changes in the aviation industry caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. To stay ahead of the market, it needed an IT model that could handle fluctuating passenger demands. The company leveraged open source solutions like Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to build a multi-cloud hybrid environment and applications using an agile container strategy. With Red Hat solutions, Cathay Pacific has reduced the operational costs of managing on-premises infrastructure and slashed capital expenditures for new servers. With the freeing of IT teams to focus on developing innovative customer-facing applications and solutions, the airline is able to better handle fluctuating demand.

Category: Digital Transformation and Cloud-Native Development

Winner: FTLife

FTLife is one of the leading providers of life insurance products in Hong Kong. The company provides a wide range of insurance and financial planning services for individuals and institutions. Its vision is to continuously strengthen long-term relationships with customers and offer innovative financial planning solutions and professional services.

In 2020, the insurance company embarked on a customer experience transformation initiative, which includes the launch of the K-Dollar reward points program. FTLife turned to Red Hat solutions, such asRed Hat OpenShift Container Platform, to build agility into its processes and accelerate the delivery of IT services and applications. Red Hat’s open source approach helped FTLife overcome the limitations of traditional application development methods, helping teams build the K-Dollar application faster and minimizing human error through better collaboration. FTLife plans to replicate K-Dollar’s success by using its development blueprint for future customer experience initiatives.

Supporting Quote

Marjet Andriesse, senior vice president and general manager, APJC, Red Hat

“As the speed of change in Asia Pacific’s business landscape continues to accelerate, we celebrate the achievements of our customers who have demonstrated how open source can help them stay agile and responsive to market and customer trends. Our winners have showcased exceptional agility and innovation when it comes to using technologies like hybrid cloud, data analytics and edge computing for their business and customers. I hope that they will serve as an inspiration for more organizations in Asia Pacific to unlock the potential of open source.”