China CITIC Bank International and 3 Hong Kong Named Winners of the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2020 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 2020 for Hong Kong. China CITIC Bank International Limited and 3 Hong Kong were honored at the Red Hat Forum Asia Pacific 2020 today for their exceptional and innovative use of Red Hat solutions.

In response to the recent global events that are causing consumer shifts, many organizations are accelerating their digital transformation efforts to adapt. In a November 2019 study sponsored by Red Hat, 95% of APAC executives surveyed said digital transformation has gained importance and perceived it as a strategy for both survival and growth in the new normal. This has increased the need to use innovative technologies to create new business models, products or services.

Since there is no one-size-fits-all blueprint for digital transformation, this year’s Red Hat Forum Asia Pacific Virtual Experience aims to inspire organizations to unleash the power of open source technologies to achieve their short-term goals and future-proof their business for the next normal. To support that, the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2020 recognize the technological achievements of organizations that demonstrate creative thinking, determined problem solving and creative use of Red Hat solutions to make a difference in their business, industry or society.

The winners were selected based on the impact of their Red Hat deployments on their business goals, industry and communities, as well as the uniqueness of vision for the project. They displayed how open source platforms and culture have helped them improve productivity, agility and cost savings while empowering them to address future challenges and emerging trends more confidently and effectively. This year’s awards honored 27 APAC organizations across five categories: digital transformation, hybrid cloud infrastructure, cloud-native development, automation and resilience. This year’s winners for Hong Kong include:

Categories: Digital Transformation and Automation
Winner: China CITIC Bank International Limited

China CITIC Bank International Limited (CNCBI) is a Hong Kong-based full-service commercial bank. It provides a broad spectrum of financial services spanning wealth management, personal banking, wholesale banking, as well as global markets and treasury solutions. 

With the technical support of Red Hat Consulting, CNCBI took on a phased approach to digital transformation to gain the ability to adapt to changing business and consumer demands in a timely and agile manner. The first phase involved revamping its monolithic architecture using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Satellite, Red Hat Virtualization and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to automate the management of its IT infrastructure, the bank minimized human errors and saw a 60% improvement in its operational efficiency. In the second phase, the bank deployed Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform as the foundation of its hybrid cloud strategy and to modernize its legacy banking applications. 

Collectively, Red Hat solutions enabled CNCBI to embrace DevOps and agile application development, which helped to halve its application development time. CNCBI can now update its mobile banking and investment application, inMotion, with new features within days, compared to three months previously. With increased speed to market, CNCBI can continually enhance its services and deliver even more effective customer experience.

Categories: Digital Transformation and Cloud-Native Development
Winner: 3 Hong Kong

3 Hong Kong is a leading mobile operator in Hong Kong offering advanced voice, data and roaming services via its 5G, 4G LTE, 3G and GSM dual-band networks.

To future-proof its ability to provide innovative and customer-oriented services, 3 Hong Kong embarked on a digital transformation project with the help of Red Hat Consulting to transform its business support systems (BSS) and operation support systems (OSS) using Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat Quay, Red Hat Runtimes, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This enabled the mobile operator to streamline and automate its business processes, as well as ensure that it can develop and launch new applications and services fast enough to support changing customer demands. 

Since the enhanced BSS and OSS provide rapid access to fast data, they also empowered 3 Hong Kong’s to gain a 360-degree view of its customers. As a result, the mobile operator can deliver a more seamless omni-channel customer experience across the web, mobile, 3Shop outlets and all other customer touchpoints. 

The Digital Transformation category recognizes organizations that have successfully addressed IT challenges and delivered business value to effectively compete as a digital enterprise. The Automation category highlights projects that most successfully automated processes, workflows, tasks and IT operations to rapidly implement innovative and disruptive technologies and practices. The Cloud-Native Development category showcases agile methodologies and organizations that have most successfully illustrate superior overall performance in creating, maintaining and deploying successful business applications.

Supporting Quotes

Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen, senior vice president and general manager, APAC, Red Hat
“2020 has been a year of uncertainties – but also possibilities. It’s inspiring to see how organizations in Asia Pacific are using open source to quickly and effectively meet changing market landscapes and consumer demands. Congratulations to this year’s winners, who we believe will become role models to other organizations looking for ideas to transform their business. We look forward to working with our customers to help them address the many real challenges our customers face today, and unlock the unlimited possibilities of taking the business forward.” 

Ji Jinxiang, chief information officer, China CITIC Bank International Limited
“Working with Red Hat has brought us a step closer to achieving our vision of becoming the best integrated financial services institution. By transforming our IT infrastructure with Red Hat’s open source solutions, we can run our mission-critical applications on Red Hat OpenShift to address customer needs while complying with regulations. We’re also able to focus more on value creation for our customers, as the new infrastructure provides a reliable yet flexible foundation that supports innovation and new industry trends such as open banking.”

Ada Liu, head of Digital and Business Transformation, Hutchison Telecommunications (Hong Kong) Limited
“3 Hong Kong is transforming into a digital telco in the new era of 5G. We have adopted innovative technologies to achieve business scalability and increase efficiency to provide customers with genuine digital experiences. Thanks to Red Hat’s open source solutions, we have streamlined and automated business processes, and are well-positioned to swiftly respond to market demands and deliver a 360-degree omni-channel user experience.”