Korea Local Information Research and Development Institute and Lotte Card Announced as Winners of the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2022 for South Korea.

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 South Korea. The Korea Local Information Research and Development Institute (KLID) and Lotte Card were honored at Red Hat Summit: Connect today for leveraging Red Hat solutions to innovate new customer experiences and to adapt quickly to regulatory changes in an evolving business landscape.

In line with this year’s theme of “Explore what’s next,” Red Hat Summit: Connect 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 Cloud Native Development

Winner: Korea Local Information Research & Development Institute (KLID)

KLID is a Korean government institution that aims to enhance the country’s administrative efficiency by developing, distributing and managing common information systems that are compliant with national standards. KLID provides over 100 digital services for local government and citizens across Korea, and operates a cyber-infringement response center and digital policies support program for local government as well. KLID also supports local governments’ financial management and tax information systems, developing informatization policies and conducting relevant investigation and research.

Korea’s local governments were experiencing regular system disruptions, data management limitations and operational and cost inefficiencies brought about by outdated data management systems. To address these issues and uplift their public service delivery standards, KLID developed a next-generation cloud-based administrative work system to reform their local governments’ tax and revenue administration processes. KLID built this system using open source cloud management solutions like Red Hat OpenStack Platform, Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and Red Hat Enterprise Linux to stabilize their systems and to accelerate work processes. KLID’s new system is expected to boost their productivity, reducing the time for tasks such as processing national taxes from several days to just a few hours. With the new system’s technical benefits, KLID can now explore new technologies such as artificial intelligence to optimize their administrative processes.

Category: Digital Transformation and Cloud-Native Development

Winner: Lotte Card

Lotte Card is a South Korean credit card company founded by the Lotte Corporation, the largest distribution and varied service network in the country. Established in December 2002, Lotte Card issues credit cards, payment plans, leasing, loans, and cash advance options to over 8.8 million people nationwide and employs over 1,500 individuals.

In 2020, the South Korean government introduced the MyData program to help citizens better manage their finances by allowing access to financial data from different institutions on a single platform, which required the transmission of personal credit information across financial institutions. Lotte Card was keen to support MyData in order to maintain their overall market competitiveness, but required new applications to optimize their system’s performance and comply with data regulations. Lotte Card turned to open source solutions Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform with Integration, Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Virtual Datacenters and Red Hat Enterprise Linux to form the new base system of their finance platform, and integrate it reliably with external financial systems.

This year, Lotte Card has positioned themselves as a ‘digital curating company’, continuously accelerating in providing new digital services and cloud migration. As a result, their monthly active users are expected to surpass 4 million users within this year.

Supporting Quotes
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.”

Wonkyu Hong, Head of Cloud Department, KLID
“The KLID has adopted the cloud to fundamentally improve services such as the end-of-term workload and property tax processing in the current system. Red Hat's open-source cloud management solution allowed us to develop a DevOps-based business system, distribution (CI/CD) and operating system to secure the foundation for digital innovation. Red Hat's open source cloud management solutions are expected to become a vital system for delivering stable financial and tax payment services to citizens and local administrations in the future.”

Jeongwook Han, Chief Data Officer, Lotte Card
“Lotte Card was keen to support the government’s MyData Program, due to the immense benefits it provided to our end users. However, our existing applications and systems needed an uplift to optimize its performance and ensure compliance with new security regulations. Red Hat’s open source solutions provided the right fit to form the new base of our systems, and offered us capabilities to address our customers’ needs for the safety and protection of their financial data. This has allowed us to actively participate in the program, and deliver an improved user experience to our customers."