Second Regional Red Hat Challenge Winner Crowned

Tough competition with over 1,500 challengers this year

Kuala Lumpur – 19 December 2012 – Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Elgin Lee Wei Sheng, from Singapore’s Nanyang Polytechnic,  was crowned winner of the Asia Pacific’s Second Regional Red Hat Challenge, which took place 15 December 2012, in Beijing.

The Second Regional Red Hat Challenge is a knowledge-based technology competition aimed at students from Malaysia, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. The competition began in November 2012 and two finalists from each region were selected to represent their schools in the final round. This is also the first time Malaysia is taking part in Red Hat’s regional competition.

Nick Low(R), the Red Hat Challenge 2012 Malaysian finalist.

“We were very happy to receive more than 1,500 participants this year for the Challenge – almost double from last year. Red Hat believes in reaching out to students and providing them with a platform to exchange ideas and test their abilities with open source technologies,” said Sachin Shirdhar, director, Services, Red Hat Asia Pacific. “With the strong support of our academic partners, I hope we can bring the Challenge to even more students next year.”

Students were short-listed through two rounds of testing on various topics including, Red Hat Enterprise Linux system administration, network administration, security administration and virtualization tasks. The challenge questions were made available through Red Hat’s free, auto-scaling Platform-as-a-Service – OpenShift. Keeping in line with this year’s theme, “For the students, by the students,” the challenge was built by Singapore Polytechnic student, Lim Guo Wei.

Elgin Lee received a Samsung S3 mobile phone, a Raspberry Pi, trophy, certificate and an opportunity to receive Red Hat training or an internship at either Red Hat’s Beijing or Singapore offices for a month. Red Hat Challenge finalists also received a Raspberry Pi and a certificate for their participation.

“I’m very happy to be part of the Red Hat regional challenge, and thanks to Red Hat, we (the students) were able to come together from various regions and have this opportunity to interact and exchange knowledge on open source technology,” said Elgin Lee. “Compared to similar industry competitions, Red Hat Challenge is the leading platform, which not only focuses on written knowledge, but also the practical know-hows required of an IT professional. I believe that this experience will provide a strong foundation for my future endeavours in the IT industry.”

The 1st runner-up is also a Singaporean student – Chia Yong Xiang, of Nanyang Polytechnic, and the 2nd runner-up is Taiwanese student, Liu Chao Zhong, of Chien Hsin University of Science and Technology. All three winners of this year’s challenge have undergone the Red Hat Certification Program, extended to them via Red Hat Academy – an academic program offered by Red Hat to tertiary schools, including universities and polytechnics.

Red Hat® Academy is a customized academic Linux curriculum designed for hands-on instruction and performance-based testing, which aims to prepare students undertaking related IT courses with a strong foundation for a career in the ICT industry. Red Hat supports schools with 100% web-deployed and web-managed program, and outfits them with the technology and technical expertise to start and sustain a Linux curriculum.

In a recently announced International Data Corporation 2013 predictions report, analysts note that a talent shortage will emerge as a major differentiator for innovation and constraint to enterprise technology adoption.   Red Hat is working with local academic institutions to provide relevant and customized training programs to help prepare their students – the future generation of IT professionals – with the relevant knowledge and skill set to address the widening market gap and push for innovation within the ICT industry and beyond.