Red Hat Recognizes Auckland Transport, Defence Science and Technology Group, and Westpac New Zealand at Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2026 for Australia and New Zealand

Red Hat, the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the winners of the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2026 for Australia and New Zealand. This year, Red Hat recognizes Auckland Transport, Defence Science and Technology Group, and Westpac New Zealand for their technological leadership demonstrating how open source technologies help organizations navigate complexity, modernize operations, and deliver sustainable growth.

As organizations across Asia Pacific embrace AI, hybrid cloud, automation, and cloud-native technologies, managing complexity has become just as important as driving innovation. With AI strategies increasingly spanning different models, accelerators, and cloud environments, enterprises are looking to open source because openness brings choice, and choice brings greater flexibility. That flexibility enables them to adopt the technologies best suited to their business needs while building the agility needed to respond to change.

The Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2026 celebrate organizations that are leading the way with open source. This year's awards recognize 32 winners across 13 countries in the APAC region whose innovative use of Red Hat solutions is helping solve complex business challenges and deliver meaningful outcomes for their customers, employees, and communities.

The winners were recognized for demonstrating how open source can help organizations turn complexity into opportunity. By modernizing technology foundations, streamlining operations, and accelerating innovation, each organization has delivered measurable outcomes that strengthen business resilience and create lasting value. Their achievements reflect Red Hat's continued collaboration with enterprises across the region to solve real-world challenges through open source.

The awards comprise six categories: Digital Transformation, Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure, Cloud-Native Development, Automation, Virtualization, and AI.

Category: Cloud-Native Development and Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure

Winner: Auckland Transport

From roads and footpaths, to cycling, parking and public transport, Auckland Transport oversees the region's transport network, including operating the local road network, planning and funding public transport, and promoting alternative ways to get around.

Before computer vision, monitoring thousands of CCTV camera feeds was largely manual, reactive and difficult to scale. Without automated detection or analysis, the CCTV footage provided limited real-time intelligence and little actionable data and insight for improving traffic operations or planning future transport investment. Recognising that this approach was insufficient and reactive, the organization pivoted from third-party legacy systems to a cloud-native approach using Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus, revolutionizing its traffic management systems by developing "Theia," an in-house computer vision platform designed to monitor a network of CCTV cameras. This strategic shift provided the automation, scalability, and reliability necessary to manage complex, distributed workloads across multiple sites. The implementation has enabled real-time traffic monitoring and incident detection, which significantly improves travel efficiency and safety across Auckland. These capabilities have extended across various divisions, such as rail, ferry, and parking, positioning Auckland Transport as a leader in smart city operations.

Category: Virtualization and Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure

Winner: Defence Science and Technology Group, Department of Defence

Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG), part of the Australian Government's Department of Defence, brings together interdisciplinary expertise from around the world to address defence and national security challenges. Working closely with the Australian science, technology and innovation eco-system, DSTG delivers scientific advice and solutions that provide capability enhancement for defence and the national security community.

Ahead of a bi-annual strategic code collaboration exercise by the Five-Eyes Intelligence Alliance member nations, DSTG's Cyber Integration team needed to rapidly establish a secure environment where researchers could collaborate, test and deploy new technologies, while supporting both traditional and modern workloads. With Red Hat OpenShift, DSTG established a secure platform supporting virtual machines, containers and future AI initiatives within its defence-accredited environment. The new approach reduced the time required to build the research environment from 14 weeks to just two, while doubling the number of research sprints completed per hackathon cycle from six to 12. The platform has since become a blueprint for similar collaboration environments, providing DSTG with a flexible hybrid cloud foundation for future research and sovereign capability development.

Category: Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure and Automation

Winner: Westpac New Zealand

Westpac New Zealand provides banking and financial services to more than 1.5 million customers across retail, agribusiness, corporate and institutional banking. Faced with growing operational complexity and the need to strengthen resilience, the company set out to bring greater control of its critical technology infrastructure in-house, while reducing the manual effort involved in managing and maintaining its systems.

As part of its 'Core Infrastructure Initiative', Westpac New Zealand successfully insourced and modernized its core application platform to mitigate regulatory risks, reduce vendor dependence, and overcome scaling constraints associated with its previous community-supported infrastructure. By standardising on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, and Red Hat Satellite, Westpac New Zealand established a modern hybrid cloud foundation and automated key infrastructure processes. This shift to a standardized, enterprise-supported technology stack has improved security by decommissioning obsolete nodes and significantly increased operational efficiency through the automation of critical lifecycle processes like patching and provisioning. By reclaiming engineering hours previously spent on manual maintenance, the organization has successfully pivoted its focus toward driving business innovation by focusing on higher-value initiatives while strengthening the reliability of services used by customers every day.

Supporting Quotes

Daniel Aw, Vice President & General Manager, APAC, Red Hat

"Enterprise technology is becoming more complex than ever, but success is no longer about how many new technologies an organization adopts. What matters more is how effectively these solutions work together to address real business challenges and deliver tangible value. This year's winners demonstrate that the organizations best positioned for long-term success are those building open, flexible foundations that allow them to innovate on their own terms. Their achievements are a testament to what organizations can accomplish when technology decisions are guided by business needs rather than trends, and it is this approach that we are proud to celebrate through the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards."

Dr. Derek Zhang, Delivery Manager - Computer Vision, Auckland Transport

"Working with Red Hat has given us the flexibility to grow our Computer Vision capabilities as Auckland's transport needs evolve. By building on open technologies, we can continue exploring new ways to make journeys safer, more efficient and more reliable for Aucklanders."

Garry Daniels, Head of Infrastructure Services and Digital Workplace, Westpac New Zealand

"Taking greater ownership of our technology has given us the ability to simplify how we operate and make better use of our engineering talent. Red Hat's solutions have enabled us to reduce manual effort and build a more resilient, automated foundation, allowing our teams to spend more time delivering improvements that ultimately benefit our customers in a fast-paced landscape.

"Taking greater ownership of our technology has given us the opportunity to simplify how we operate and create a scalable foundation for innovation. With Red Hat's solutions, we have reduced manual effort and established a resilient, automated platform that enables us to accelerate the delivery of new capabilities at scale. As a result, our engineering teams can focus more of their time on driving meaningful improvements and delivering better outcomes for our customers."

Shane Bennett, Group Leader Cyber Integration, Defence Science and Technology Group, Department of Defence

"In defence research, the ability to collaborate and experiment quickly is critical. Working with Red Hat enabled us to create a secure environment that supports both innovation and the stringent requirements of the industry. Red Hat has helped us bring those priorities together, giving our researchers a strong foundation to collaborate, experiment and develop sovereign capabilities."