Red Hat Summit: Connect 2024

Matt Hicks was named President and Chief Executive Officer of Red Hat in July 2022. In his previous role, he was Executive Vice President of Products and Technologies where he was responsible for all product engineering, including products such as Red Hat® OpenShift®, Red Hat Enterprise Linux®, the JBoss® middleware portfolio, OpenStack® and Ansible®.

He has been with Red Hat for 16 years, watching it grow from a single-product company to the multi-billion-dollar enterprise it is today. He was also one of the founding members of the OpenShift team and has been at the forefront of cloud computing ever since.

With more than 25 years of Linux experience and a background in computer engineering, Hicks has always had a passion for combining infrastructure and application technologies. His engineering background includes several years at IBM, as well as startup experience, where he served in various roles spanning engineering, IT, and consulting. This breadth of experience has allowed Hicks to use technology to solve customer and business problems across all areas of IT. With technology innovation converging on open source, Linux, and containers, his experience has placed him at the center of what he believes to be the most exciting time in industry history.

Marjet Andriesse is a seasoned leader, with over 25 years of vast international experience in driving customer satisfaction, sales, and revenue growth.  She has been instrumental in successful transition and organizational management for technology and professional services firms across Europe and Asia.

As general manager and vice president of Red Hat in Asia Pacific, Marjet is responsible for the next phase of the company’s growth in the region, as well as leading initiatives to enable customer success with open hybrid cloud technology. Marjet also manages engagement with enterprise customers and emerging technologies sales and support capabilities.

Throughout her career, Marjet has been a passionate advocate for workplace diversity and has been acknowledged for her forward thinking leadership. This includes her role as Chair of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) council for Red Hat APAC and has been recognized as one of the Techleaders for the inaugural SG100 Women in Tech in 2020.

Marjet’s experience spans industries, including logistics and telecommunications, as well as HR services in a variety of leadership positions. Before joining Red Hat, she was the managing director of Telstra in Asia Pacific and was responsible for delivering the company’s corporate strategy in the region. Prior to Telstra, Marjet’s career also included working with Randstad and KPN NV in national and international management positions across Europe and Asia.

Marjet is a Dutch native and holds a master’s degree in Economics from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands.

Prem Pavan is a seasoned business leader in the technology industry, having led and grown businesses across Asian markets for over 23 years. At Red Hat, Prem is responsible for the overall business management of Southeast Asia and Korea region.

He was previously Vice President at LivePerson (a Customer Experience AI Company), responsible for driving the go-to-market strategy, growth and operations across Asia. Prem was also a VP & MD at Citrix, delivering profitable growth, productivity,  market expansion and customer, partner & employee satisfaction. He also held previous roles as Head of business at Kofax and Software AG with a focus on Asia and Southeast Asia, respectively.

Prem is especially passionate about evangelizing new trends in Human Centric AI, Future of Work, Digital Transformation and Leadership. He is a frequently invited speaker for a variety of industry and technology forums.

Prem has made Singapore his home since 2004. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering, and an MBA in Information Management.

With over a decade of experience in the healthcare sector, Koh Choon Kiat leads cloud platform engineering initiatives at Synapxe. He specialises in driving innovation within healthcare cloud platforms, focusing on both private and commercial healthcare cloud. His expertise includes leveraging automation and process reengineering to enhance cloud infrastructure, ensuring seamless and efficient operations in healthcare systems.

Ricky Mohan is a transformative leader recognized for driving modernization and hybrid cloud strategies that unlock business potential. As the Head of Architecture and Engineering at Globe, he is deeply passionate about leveraging Kubernetes and hybrid cloud environments to deliver resilient, scalable, and future-proof solutions. Ricky excels at leading large engineering teams, driving complex modernization initiatives, and fostering a culture of innovation and collaboration. His focus on cutting-edge technologies enables organizations to stay agile and efficient, while achieving business growth and operational excellence. Prior to Globe, Ricky held senior roles at global organizations such as Accenture, Verifone, and Havas, consistently delivering impactful software, cloud, and infrastructure strategies for clients across enterprise, fintech, telco, and startup sectors.

As the Group Chief Technology Officer at CIMB, Ros Aziah Mohd Yusoff stands at the intersection of innovation and finance. Her journey has also led her to face a tricky quest of redefining banking through technology.

With over three decades of experience, Ros has orchestrated a symphony of digital advancement, with a team of people from diverse backgrounds. She doesn’t merely adapt; she attempts to shape the future of technology within CIMB. Under her leadership, CIMB has embraced artificial intelligence, automation, and cybersecurity, in revolutionizing customer experience.

Beyond technology, Ros is passionate about building and nurturing champions from multi-dimensional teams. She believes that innovation thrives when perspectives collide. Her mentorship of aspiring tech professionals echoes her commitment to building bridges across disciplines.

Ros is not just a CTO; she is convinced that when you “offer your strengths to others”, you are creating the positive ripple effects that we all hope to achieve.

Kit Yong leads the Enterprise Business Group, a growing segment that focuses on enterprise and government customers. Under his direction, StarHub delivers connectivity, platforms, applications and tailored industry solutions and services that enable organisations to thrive in the digital economy.

Albert Chai is general manager for Southeast Asia excluding Singapore at Red Hat, with responsibility for the region’s overall business. Albert is passionate about supporting customers’ digital transformation journeys and collaborating with partners to unleash the full potential of open source innovation.

Albert Chai brings 25 years of experience in the IT and telecommunications industry across the Asia Pacific region. Prior to his current role at Red Hat, he served as the Managing Director for Cisco Malaysia. He also held previous management roles at Acision Malaysia, a global leader in messaging and mobile internet solutions, and as the country director of Logica Indonesia.

Albert was a recipient of the Malaysian Government’s civil service scholarship, and graduated from University College London with first-class honours in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Albert is fluent in English and Bahasa Melayu.

Ameeta is Senior Director for Solution Architecture & Adoption for Red Hat Asia Pacific and is responsible for providing Technical leadership and direction to a team of Solution and Customer Success Architects and Executives that are engaged with clients to bring the power of Open Source technologies to Enterprises . Ameeta has spent several years in the industry in client facing roles where she has helped clients architect, design, build and troubleshoot software systems.

Ben Lin is a Solution Architect from Red Hat with a dedicated focus on helping enterprises innovate and drive business differentiation by leveraging on open source application development technologies. Having delved in the field of data analytics and AI/ML previously, Ben carries an intrinsic passion in marrying software powered by the relentless drive of open source with the modern day drivers of business growth like data analytics and application development. Reach out to Ben today to know Red Hat Application Services help enterprises go to market faster and focus on innovation with a unified application environment delivering a scalable and cost effective approach to the development, operations and portability of applications.

Dave Leong, as the AI Engineer for IBM's APAC Client Engineering, is a leader in advancing AI-driven solutions and cloud integration. His seven years of experience in cloud platforms, data engineering, and machine learning have been instrumental in simplifying the adoption of AI for business transformation across a wide range of industries, including financial services, banking, government services, customer care, and manufacturing.
In his role, Dave is currently focused on implementing GenAI foundation models, leveraging IBM Granite LLMs and the watsonx platform, and collaborating with Red Hat's RHEL AI platform to enhance enterprise AI capabilities. His work aims to deliver seamless solutions for developing, testing, and deploying AI models in real-world environments, helping organizations streamline workflows and accelerate innovation.

Guna has been in the IT software industry for over 25 years in various leadership roles. Currently, he is the general manager for Singapore at Red Hat, where he leads sales and business development activities in the country.

Over the years, Guna has been extensively involved in the implementation of complex solutions such as hybrid multi-cloud platforms, customer experience and supply chain across the world in various industries ranging from financial services, government, manufacturing and retail.

Prior to joining Red Hat, Guna was the General Manager for Cloud & Cognitive Solutions at IBM Singapore. He also held leadership positions at JDA Software and Oracle.

Guna graduated from the National University of Singapore with a Bachelor's degree in Engineering (Honors). He maintains an active presence in the local cloud community as VP of the SCS Cloud Chapter, and as the Vice-Chairman of the SGTech Cloud & Data Chapter. Guna is also an active NS Volunteer recognized with the National Commendation Medal and as a NS Man of the Year.

Wai Leong stands at the forefront of cloud innovation as the OpenShift Sales Leader for Red Hat in Southeast Asia and Korea. With a proven track record at industry giants like IBM and HP, he now spearheads a team of specialists dedicated to fostering OpenShift adoption and acquisition among Red Hat's clientele. His expertise in steering digital transformation initiatives across diverse industries has been pivotal in advancing modern application development, hybrid-cloud adoption, and private cloud infrastructures.

Luka is General Manager for Azure Infrastructure in Asia Region at Microsoft which spans ANZ, ASEAN, India, Japan, Korea and GCR. Prior to his current role, Luka held several leadership roles with Microsoft across EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) and Greater Asia. With 20+ years in industry, and extensive sales and technical background, he also quickly became known as a people leader who could span a breadth of technologies and businesses. 

Currently he is leading Asia wide team of Azure Sales Specialists in the Global Black Belt organization, who strive to holistically engage customers, help them realize the benefits of the public cloud platform, consult them on their cloud journey, and support them with their technical adoption plans and cloud migrations. In addition, he is aligning all the Linux Global Black Belt specialists globally to drive collaboration with different Linux vendors like Red Hat, and making sure customers are aware of Microsoft cloud's support of the Linux platform.

Nicholas Chia spends his day engaging his audiences in both enterprise and community spaces about Red Hat automation capabilities. He has a strong passion for driving technological innovation. With over many years of experience in the industry where he developed a deep expertise in supporting business partners, sales and presales teams, providing technical solution design, and delivering exceptional results for businesses and their customers.

Throughout his career, he has had the privilege of collaborating with renowned Partners such as IBM, HPE, Microsoft, AWS, and many others, where he provided subject matter expertise in utilizing cutting-edge technologies to solve complex challenges. By leveraging his extensive knowledge on Ansible Automation Platform, he has helped empower businesses to achieve their goals, enhance operational efficiency, and stay ahead in today's competitive landscape.

Prabhu is a Senior Solutions Architect at Red Hat Singapore covering strategic FSI customers to adopt Red Hat Technologies in their transformational journey toward a multi-cloud strategy.

Prabhu has extensively worked on designing, architecture, and implementing IT Infrastructure for the major enterprise application in Hybrid Cloud. 

Richard Jeremiah is the General Manager for Data Centre Solutions for South Asia & Emerging Markets. He is responsible for the overall Infrastructure Solution Group Business for South Asia. He was the Senior Director and General Manager for the Australian Business at Dell EMC and prior to that he was the Country Manager and Managing Director of PT Dell Indonesia. He was responsible for the overall Country Business Strategy and leading the overall Dell EMC business in Indonesia and attaining the Growth commitment of the organization.

Robert is a seasoned IT professional with a strong background in IT consulting, specializing in automation and digital transformation. With a diverse expertise in automation, cybersecurity, governance, risk, and compliance, Robert continually harnessed his skills to help organizations in the region bridge the gap between innovation and business objectives.

Currently, Robert serves as APAC Specialist for Automation at Red Hat, where he continues to develop GTM strategy, drive innovation and guide organizations towards cutting-edge solutions. Prior to joining Red Hat, Robert made significant contributions to renowned firms such as EY and Automation Anywhere, leaving an indelible mark on the industry through his relentless commitment to revolutionizing IT and business processes through automation.

Sandip Sharma is a seasoned technology leader with over 25 years of cross-industry experience in Financial Services, Telco, Manufacturing, and Government. As a Head of AI - APAC, he will spearhead the AI/ML and GenAI SSP team across the region, driving the implementation of innovative AI solutions for enterprise customers.

Prior to his current role, Sandip worked at H2O.ai as Director of AI Solution Engineering for Asia Pacific and Japan, where he is responsible for setting up and leading the AI/ML and GenAI solution engineering team across the region.

Sandip holds a Master's degree in Business IT from Singapore Management University. He is also certified in Data Science and Machine Learning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

He is passionate about building and running AI/ML experts teams and enabling customers and partner channels to develop direct and indirect AI led business opportunities.

Siva Krishna Bayya is a highly experienced IT professional with over 15 years of experience in the industry. As the Business Development Manager at CTC Global, he works with customers to modernize their applications and infrastructure using AI-driven solutions, helping businesses enhance their technology environment and drive operational improvements.

Sumeet is a Senior Solutions Architect with extensive experience in supporting the FSI Sector in the streams of DevOps and Apps design and development. His primary focus is helping customers successfully adopt Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform.

Troy Adianto is a Senior Solutions Architect at Red Hat, he has 15 years of experience implementing complex enterprise solutions across the region and well versed in modern software architecture. He is an advocate of cloud native development and has helped many companies to transition from legacy architecture to more open, agile architecture powered by Kubernetes and cloud native technology.

Li Ming brings over two decades of technology and engineering experience. As the AI Architect and a member of the AI Specialist team in APAC, he is responsible for leading AI innovation to tackle complex business challenges and improve customer outcomes. His role involves shaping strategic AI initiatives and guiding thought leadership across the region.

Previously, he was the Chief Architect for the public sector in Red Hat Singapore, specializing in Cloud, Container, and Automation technologies.

Before joining Red Hat, Li Ming has worked in engineering, R&D, and technology leadership roles. He spent the last 20+ years in Open Source out of which 10 years of that time was actively in High Performance Computing (HPC) and Big Data.

He has also held numerous technology leadership roles in engineering, R&D, consulting and architecture.

Vaibhav works with Red Hat as Technical Account Manager (TAM) for OpenShift & platform in the customer success team. Vaibhav holds good knowledge of multiple Red Hat products such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat OpenStack and Virtualization. In his current role, he develops relationships with key business and IT stakeholders including customer managers and technical associates, he works closely with strategic customers on different Red Hat products and acts as a Red Hat technical ambassador.

Varun is the Sales Lead at HPE for Hybrid Cloud Solutions and consulting business in the APAC region. With over two decades of experience in guiding customers through their digital transformation and hybrid cloud journeys, Varun brings a wealth of knowledge to the table. In this session, Varun will discuss HPE’s approach to helping customers explore alternatives to VMware and highlight the benefits of HPE GreenLake’s managed container-as-a-service solution.

Wayne Toh is a Principal EC2 Graviton Specialist Solution Architect. He works with customers and partners to enable them to run their workloads on efficient compute to achieve optimization and sustainability goals. He is a certified Kubernetes administrator by the Linux Foundation.

Yajuvendra currently works as Solution Architect at Red Hat Singapore is a dynamic and results-driven Solution Architect with over 20 years of experience driving digital transformation for Telco, Media, and Entertainment industries. With a proven track record of success in implementing cloud-native platforms and automation, Yajuvendra has played a key role in accelerating the digital transformation journeys of multiple operators worldwide in Devices/Core/OSS/BSS.

As an accomplished software developer, tester, and architect in Telecommunication and Aerospace software, Yajuvendra possesses a deep understanding of the complexities of these industries. He has also worked as a Network Architect for 4G and 5G networks in multiple operators across the world, providing him with a holistic view of the telecommunications landscape.

Yajuvendra graduated from Jamia Millia Islamia in India with a degree in Electrical Engineering and Post Graduate Diploma in Embedded System and Design from CDAC Mohali, and has leveraged his educational background to provide innovative solutions that drive business value. His ability to deliver results in complex, fast-paced environments has earned him a reputation as a trusted advisor and expert in his field.