Will Red Hat’s AI Centre of Excellence Finally Move Asian Firms Beyond Endless AI Pilots?

New Singapore hub backed by the Economic Development Board stations engineers on the ground to turn proof-of-concepts into real production systems

Red Hat has opened a dedicated AI Centre of Excellence in Singapore to help companies across Asia-Pacific move artificial intelligence projects out of the pilot stage and into everyday use. The centre, supported by Singapore’s Economic Development Board, will place forward-deployed engineers directly with customers so they can solve real production challenges.

Daniel Aw, vice-president and general manager for Asia-Pacific at Red Hat, explained the thinking behind the move. “What this AI CoE will do is to bring the engineering capability locally here, and we also want to reduce what we call the feedback loop back to headquarters,” he said.

The centre starts with about 18 people, including engineers, architects and project managers. The team will work on common industry problems, create reusable software designs, and feed customer needs back into Red Hat’s global product roadmap. One of the first major partners is Singapore’s Defence Science and Technology Agency, which signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on AI, cloud, security and edge computing.

Yueh Chinn Seah, vice-president of Digital Industry Singapore, noted that Red Hat’s strong focus on production readiness sets this AI Centre of Excellence apart from the more than 100 other AI centres already operating in the city-state. The initiative also supports Singapore’s national goal of growing its pool of AI practitioners.

This development was covered by CIO Bulletin as part of its ongoing reporting on how global technology firms are helping enterprises turn AI experiments into reliable, secure business systems.

News Source: https://www.computerweekly.com/