Red Hat Recognises Hong Leong Bank at APAC Innovation Awards 2026

Red Hat has named Hong Leong Bank as the Malaysian winner of the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2026, recognising the bank’s use of open source technologies to modernise its infrastructure and improve digital services.

This year’s awards, themed “Unlock what’s next,” recognise 32 organisations across 13 Asia Pacific markets for using Red Hat solutions to address complex business challenges and drive innovation. The awards cover five areas: Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure, Cloud-Native Development, Automation, Virtualization and AI.

Hong Leong Bank Modernises Its Infrastructure

Hong Leong Bank was recognised in the Virtualization and Cloud-Native Development category for its efforts to improve the scalability and performance of a critical online business application.

The bank moved the application from a traditional monolithic architecture to a containerised environment using Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Application Foundations. It also adopted Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization to modernise its existing database infrastructure and bring virtual machines and containers together on a common platform.

The move has helped reduce software deployment cycles from months to weeks while eliminating manual virtual machine patching for containerised workloads. The new architecture also allows applications to scale dynamically during periods of high traffic.

According to Hong Leong Bank, the modernised infrastructure provides a more flexible foundation for introducing new digital banking capabilities while maintaining the reliability expected by customers.

Red Hat said the 2026 winners demonstrate how open source technologies can help organisations simplify complex IT environments, modernise operations and create greater flexibility as technologies such as AI, hybrid cloud and automation continue to evolve.

William Streitberg, Chief Information & Technology Officer at Hong Leong Bank, said the collaboration with Red Hat has provided the bank with a common foundation for both existing and cloud-native workloads, allowing new capabilities to be introduced more quickly.

The recognition highlights Hong Leong Bank’s ongoing efforts to modernise its technology infrastructure while supporting the continued development of its digital banking services.