The organisations were recognised for demonstrating how open source technologies can help navigate complexity, modernise operations and deliver sustainable growth. As organisations across Asia Pacific embrace artificial intelligence, hybrid cloud, automation and cloud-native technologies, managing complexity has become as important as driving innovation.
With AI strategies increasingly spanning different models, accelerators and cloud environments, enterprises are turning to open source because openness provides choice and choice brings greater flexibility. This flexibility enables organisations to adopt technologies suited to their business needs while building the agility required to respond to change.
Reflecting this year’s theme, “Unlock what’s next,” the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2026 recognise 32 winners across the region for innovative use of Red Hat solutions to address complex business challenges and deliver meaningful outcomes for customers, employees and communities.
The winners demonstrated how open source can help organisations turn complexity into opportunity. By modernising technology foundations, streamlining operations and accelerating innovation, each organisation has delivered measurable outcomes that strengthen business resilience and create lasting value. Their achievements reflect Red Hat's continued collaboration with enterprises across 13 APAC countries to solve real-world challenges through open source.
The awards comprise six categories: Digital Transformation, Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure, Cloud-Native Development, Automation, Virtualisation, and AI.
In the Cloud-Native Development category, the winner was the Department of Information Technology & Communication, Government of Rajasthan. The department leads the use of technology across Rajasthan government departments and autonomous bodies to improve administration and public service delivery. Its responsibilities include IT consultancy, e-governance implementation, technical guidance, capacity building, and the delivery of IT infrastructure and software solutions across the Rajasthan government.
To modernise its digital governance ecosystem, DoIT&C needed to address legacy systems, siloed applications, manual provisioning, limited scalability and slow deployment cycles across platforms such as e-Mitra and Raj Kaaj. The organisation adopted Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus, Red Hat Application Foundation, Red Hat Trusted Application Pipeline and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, supported by Red Hat Consulting and Red Hat Training and Certification, to move from virtualised environments to a standardised, container-based platform with greater automation and DevOps capabilities.
The transformation reduced service rollout time by 30-40%, improved system availability and performance by 25-35%, automated 50-60% of infrastructure and operations, and accelerated application development and deployment cycles by around two times. This helped DoIT&C shift from a reactive, maintenance-heavy IT model to a more agile, innovation-focused ecosystem, improving governance efficiency and delivering faster, more reliable services to citizens.
Adani Airport Holdings Limited was recognised in the Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure and Cloud-Native Development category. Adani Airport Holdings Limited (AAHL), India’s largest airport infrastructure company, manages, operates and develops eight airports across the country. Its network accounts for 24 per cent of passenger footfalls and 33 per cent of air cargo traffic in India, serving passengers, airlines, logistics companies, retailers and other airport stakeholders.
As Adani Airports expanded its digital capabilities, it needed a more scalable and flexible integration platform to connect more than 20 diverse airport systems, accelerate the onboarding of new applications and support operations across on-premise and cloud environments. Using Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat Application Foundation and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Adani Airports built a hybrid cloud integration platform to deliver real-time data across its airport ecosystem.
The platform improved system performance, reducing response times from a few seconds to microseconds, while providing travellers with more transparent and accurate information on wait times, baggage and flight status. Faster detection of bottlenecks and operational issues is helping airports improve efficiency, reduce congestion at checkpoints and enhance the passenger experience, while supporting faster turnaround times and on-time performance for airlines.
Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), Ministry Of Railways, was also recognised in the Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure and Cloud-Native Development category. IRCTC, a public sector enterprise under the Ministry of Railways, is the digital, catering, tourism and hospitality arm of Indian Railways. It operates India’s largest online railway ticketing platform, alongside catering, tourism, hospitality and premium train services, supporting millions of passengers across the country every day.
With nearly 89% of reserved railway tickets booked online, IRCTC’s next-generation e-ticketing platform (NGeT) had become business-critical but capacity-constrained, especially during Tatkal and peak booking periods. With Indian Railways serving approximately 2-2.5 crore passengers daily and more than 8 billion annually, scalability, uptime and transaction performance are critical to IRCTC’s digital services.
To strengthen these capabilities, IRCTC adopted a containerised, microservices-based platform built on Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus, supported by Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform for end-to-end orchestration. The modernisation enabled the platform to auto-scale during periods of intense demand, helping to address system failures and booking disruptions during peak periods.
It also improved infrastructure efficiency and accelerated application boot times, enabling teams to release new versions faster and with less friction. By replacing manual, error-prone operational tasks with automated workflows, IRCTC is also strengthening its security posture, reducing operational effort and freeing developer resources for higher-value work.
Bharti Airtel Ltd was recognised in the Virtualization category. Headquartered in India, Bharti Airtel is a global communications solutions provider with over 650 million customers in 15 countries across India and Africa. The company also has its presence in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka through its associate entities. The company is ranked second amongst mobile operators globally, and its networks cover over two billion people.
To deliver on its customer-first promise at massive scale, Airtel has been reengineering its infrastructure and moving from legacy, manual systems to open, flexible, cloud-native platforms. This future-ready foundation has helped Airtel innovate new technology solutions delivering enhanced customer experiences across its digital services, including recharge, billing and self-service applications.
As part of this transformation, Airtel has been leveraging Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus, Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes, Red Hat Quay and Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization.
Daniel Aw, Vice President & General Manager, APAC, Red Hat APAC, said, “Enterprise technology is becoming more complex than ever, but success is no longer about how many new technologies an organisation adopts. What matters more is how effectively these solutions work together to address real business challenges and deliver tangible value.”
He said this year’s winners demonstrate that organisations best positioned for long-term success are those building open, flexible foundations that allow them to innovate on their own terms. Their achievements, he added, are a testament to what organisations can accomplish when technology decisions are guided by business needs rather than trends, which Red Hat is proud to celebrate through the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards.
The awards highlight the use of open source technologies across government, aviation, railways and telecommunications, demonstrating how organisations are using modern technology foundations, automation, hybrid cloud and cloud-native platforms to address operational complexity and accelerate digital transformation.
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