Red Hat Innovation Awards

How does the Red Hat Innovation Awards nomination and selection process work?

Do you think you have what it takes to be a Red Hat Innovation Awards winner? Now’s your chance to share your innovative success story and be recognized for your contributions.

Customers can nominate themselves for an award, or they can be nominated by others inspired by their work during the two months that nominations are open.

Our panel of industry-expert judges will review and score the nominations (an average of 60 per year, based on past data), narrowing them down to the top 5 winning projects and 5 honorable mentions that meet our Innovation Awards criteria for outstanding work. The winners and honorable mentions will be publicly announced and showcased starting on the first day of Red Hat Summit 2020.

From the 5 winners, the 2020 Red Hat Innovator of the Year will be selected by the community through online voting. The winner will be announced at Red Hat Summit 2020, held April 27-30 in San Francisco.

Read the 2020 Red Hat Innovation Awards terms and conditions for complete details.

Note: Not all countries are eligible. To find out if your country is eligible, go to section 2 of the terms and conditions. English submissions only.

What makes an Innovation Award winner?

Red Hat Innovation Awards submissions will be judged against 5 criteria, listed below. Judges will score each submission, and those that receive the highest scores across all criteria will be the 5 winners and 5 honorable mentions.

• Business impact: How is your project directly benefiting your organization? Is it impacting another line of business or ROI? Do data points show increased productivity, cost, or time savings? Share details about the project’s measurable impact.

  Example: BP needed a reliable, modern technology infrastructure to speed application development and deployment. To simplify processes and enhance productivity, BP used Red Hat® OpenShift® Container Platform running on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to build the Application Engineering Services’ Digital Conveyor. BP can now provision a new environment in 7 minutes, instead of 2-3 weeks, allowing developers to innovate quickly and better support business goals.

• Digital transformation: Has your organization gone through a migration, optimized your existing IT, integrated apps or business processes, or quickly built more modern apps? Has it moved to the cloud (public, private, or hybrid), and are you using AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google? Clearly articulate why you needed to transform, share details of your journey, and illustrate where your organization is now by showing us the before and after.

  Example: As a leading bank serving private, corporate, and fiduciary clients, Deutsche Bank has embraced digital transformation. The bank wanted to improve the experience of both its banking customers and users of its back-end technology, including employees and external providers and developers who use the platform to build and run applications. Using Red Hat solutions, Deutsche Bank built an open source Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) to simplify DevOps collaboration, optimize capacity, and increase efficiency, cutting end-to-end application development time from 6-9 months to 2-3 weeks.

• Openness: Is your project leading innovation by building an open source culture, contributing to community projects, fostering DevOps, or promoting diversity, collaboration, and meritocracy? Is the project using open source technology to support a broad range of applications and business services? Tell us about it.

  Example: With its new private cloud platform, Emirates NBD improved collaboration between internal teams and with partners using application programming interfaces (APIs) and microservices. And with agile development practices, the bank reduced app launch and update cycles. “With our DevOps pipeline and Red Hat, we did a proof of concept for WhatsApp banking in 3 days,” said Ali Rey, vice president of Cloud Platforms at Emirates NBD. “Previously it would have taken 6 months, maybe even a year.” The new platform established a flexible yet stable foundation for private cloud today—and hybrid cloud tomorrow. The bank can now better compete with the personalized, innovative services offered by less-regulated competitors.

• Community impact or influence: How is your IT making a difference in the lives of others? Are you improving your customer, end-user, or employee experiences day-to-day? Are you influencing an organization or agency to impact communities or your society?

  Example: HCA Healthcare, one of the largest healthcare service providers in the United States, created the Sepsis Prediction and Optimization of Therapy (SPOT) platform to collect and analyze clinical data and signal caregivers in real time to initiate early sepsis care. With SPOT, built on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, HCA Healthcare is able to detect and identify sepsis up to 20 hours earlier than traditional screening methods–helping to save thousands of lives.

• Cool factor: Does your project have a uniqueness and distinct vision showing innovation, creativity, and originality that we haven’t seen or heard of before?

  Example: To support its development and operation, Lufthansa Technik created a hybrid cloud infrastructure based on enterprise open source software from Red Hat. The team can now use agile DevOps approaches, automation, internal and third-party integration, and self-service capabilities to quickly iterate based on data and feedback. Lufthansa Technik provides an innovative maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) application, called AVIATAR, that helps the world’s top airlines optimize their technical operations.

What's in it for you?

Red Hat Innovation Awards winners will receive:

• 2 complimentary Red Hat Summit passes and 3 nights hotel accommodations. (Not applicable for government organizations)
• Speaking opportunities at Red Hat Summit.
• An invitation to a VIP reception at Red Hat Summit.
• Inclusion in the Red Hat Innovation Awards winner announcement.
• Promotion through Red Hat’s website, social media channels, and marketing campaigns.
• Multiple features in on-site digital and print signage at Red Hat Summit.
• Publicity in top industry publications.
• Opportunities to speak with key media outlets and top industry analysts.

Dates to remember

August 1, 2019: Nominations open

September 13, 2019: Last day for submissions

October 2019: 2020 winners and honorable mentions notified

April 27, 2020: 2020 winners and honorable mentions announced publicly

April 27-30, 2020: Red Hat Innovation Awards winners, honorable mentions, and Red Hat Innovator of the Year recognized at Red Hat Summit in San Francisco

2020 Red Hat Innovation Awards judges

Ashesh Badani, vice president and general manager, Cloud Platforms, Red Hat

Matthew Burbidge, deputy editor, ITWeb

Marco Bill-Peter, senior vice president, Customer Experience and Engagement, Red Hat

Stefanie Chiras, vice president and general manager, Red Hat Enterprise Linux business unit, Red Hat

Leigh Day, vice president, Marketing Communications, Red Hat

KellyAnn Fitzpatrick, industry analyst, RedMonk

Dr. Edmund Jackson, chief data scientist, HCA Healthcare

Sean Michael Kerner, freelance journalist

Chris Wright, vice president and chief technology officer, Red Hat