National Center for High-performance Computing of National Applied Research Laboratories and Taiwan Business Bank Announced as Winners of the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2021 for Taiwan

Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the winners of the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2021 for Taiwan. National Center for High-performance Computing of National Applied Research Laboratories (NCHC of NARLabs) and Taiwan Business Bank were honored at the Red Hat APAC Forum Virtual Experience today for their digital transformation journey and innovations using Red Hat solutions.

Open source continues to be an innovation engine for Asia Pacific enterprises by helping them modernize infrastructures, develop applications and transform digitally. According to Red Hat’s recent State of Enterprise Open Source report, 92 percent of the region’s IT leaders are using enterprise open source today, exceeding the global average of 90 percent.

With the theme of “Open Your Perspective,” the Red Hat APAC Forum Virtual Experience encourages organizations to build resilience, achieve their transformation goals and propel their business forward with open source. This year, the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards recognized the technological achievements of 24 organizations in the region for their creative thinking, determined problem solving and innovative use of Red Hat solutions.

The winners were selected based on the impact of their Red Hat deployments to support business goals and company culture, industry, communities, as well as the uniqueness of vision for the project. They displayed how open source tools and culture have helped them to improve productivity, agility, and cost savings while empowering them to address future challenges and emerging trends more confidently and effectively.

Winners were recognized in five categories: Digital Transformation, Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure, Cloud-native Development, Automation and Resilience.

Category: Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure and Cloud-Native Development

Winner: National Center for High-performance Computing of National Applied Research Laboratories (NCHC of NARLabs)

The National Center for High-performance Computing (NCHC) is one of the eight national-level research laboratories under National Applied Research Laboratories (NARLabs), headquartered at Hsinchu Science and Industrial Park in Hsinchu City, Taiwan. NCHC developed the Taiwania supercomputer series, providing local academia and industry with world-class high performance computing (HPC) services and AI high speed compute resources, combined with big data analytics, to support scientific research.

In 2020, the NCHC of NARLabs developed an AI Cloud, E-Learning Gateway, to provide a high-quality environment for high-performance computing and smart application technology implementation and assist education institutions in preparing students for a digital future. This equips students with skills in areas such as data analytics, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, IoT and 5G. To support the demands of such technical fields, the NCHC of NARLabs provides more flexible high performance computing (HPC), storage and networking, accelerating the deployment of a cloud-enabled education environment.

The NCHC of NARLabs used Red Hat OpenShift to build a cloud environment dedicated to the education sector that could improve the computing efficiency and services for educational institutions in real time. The center upgraded from its previous platform to help overcome complex upgrade processes and potential security risks.  With a high-performance education cloud that is robust and reliable, NCHC of NARLabs is able to automate installation, upgrades, and lifecycle management throughout the container stack on any cloud with improved security features at every level. The platform’s ability to automate continuous updates reduces NCHC of NARLabs’ maintenance costs and manpower needs by a third. NCHC of NARLabs can help deliver better education experiences to Taiwanese students by provisioning compute, storage and networking resources more seamlessly to institutions.

Category: Digital Transformation and Cloud-Native Development

Winner: Taiwan Business Bank

Taiwan Business Bank is the only bank serving small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the country. Established in 1915, the bank has since expanded to 125 local branches and eight overseas branches. Its services include deposit, loan, foreign exchange, trust, credit card summary, internet banking, wealth management and related financial services.

As the Taiwanese banking landscape becomes more digital, Taiwan Business Bank wanted to stay ahead by enhancing customer experience in digital financial services and accelerate their time to market for new offerings. The bank formed a digital transformation committee to modernize their online banking solutions and mobile banking initiatives. The new architecture uses microservices to transform the bank's legacy systems with a platform that allows comprehensive support for more complex workloads.

With the help of Red Hat Consulting’s expertise in agile development, the bank decided to implement Red Hat OpenShift to drive microservice management, which allowed its IT teams to standardize application deployment flow. It has helped over 20 members of the infrastructure team by allowing them to provision IT environments seamlessly, offering better customer experience. In addition, when holding large-scale events in the past, the system often experienced high traffic when the number of users exceeded system load. Red Hat OpenShift’s microservice management is capable of scaling related services automatically and flexibly orchestrate system resources to achieve uninterrupted financial services.

Leveraging the project’s success, the bank is promoting an agile innovation culture supported by the microservices. With the support of Red Hat open source solutions, Taiwan Business Bank is better positioned to innovate faster and improve agility to develop new services rapidly to respond quickly to the demands of digital banking.

The Digital Transformation category recognizes organizations that have successfully addressed IT challenges and delivered business value to effectively compete as a digital enterprise. The Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure category showcases a collaborative public, private, or open hybrid cloud deployment. The Cloud-Native Development category showcases agile methodologies and organizations that have most successfully illustrated superior overall performance in creating, maintaining and deploying successful business applications.

Supporting Quotes

Marjet Andriesse, vice president and general manager, APAC, Red Hat
“2021 continues to be a year of uncertainty, but Asia Pacific organizations are using open source technology to more rapidly and effectively create more business possibilities with digital transformation. They are using technologies like hybrid cloud, data analytics and edge computing to meet changing market landscapes and enhance customer experiences. Congratulations to this year’s winners, and we hope that Red Hat’s open source solutions will continue to help address the many real challenges our customers face today, and unlock the future for business in Asia Pacific.”

Shih Hao Hung, deputy director general, National Center for High-performance Computing, National Applied Research Laboratories (NCHC of NARLabs)

“Education and technology have become intertwined as Taiwan’s industries undergo digital transformation. With Red Hat, NCHC of NARLabs has built an education cloud that empowers our local education institutes to create curriculums that can prepare our students for a digital future. Red Hat OpenShift is a key catalyst for helping us raise the next generation of professionals that can build up Taiwan’s growing digital economy.”

Song Sui Chiu, vice president, Taiwan Business Bank

“Digital has become the lifeblood of many banks and our customers prefer the speed and convenience of digital interactions. With a microservice management platform, we have better positioned ourselves to take advantage of these trends and stay relevant to the needs of our customers. Harnessing microservices with Red Hat OpenShift has given us the agility and ability to innovate in order to adapt to the fast-changing business landscape and deliver the services our customers require.”