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2022 Customer Achievement Awards: 7 Heroes and Innovators in APJ

VMware Staff

We’re delighted to reveal the winners of our 2022 Customer Achievement Awards at VMware Explore in the Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) region. This year, our awards committee selected seven winners across two categories: heroes and innovators.  

Who are the heroes? These customers act decisively and strategically to improve our ever-evolving, complex world. They embrace new technologies to deliver better outcomes for the greater good, even in the face of unexpected challenges. Our heroes include: 

  • Toyota Motor Corporation​, Customer Experiences Hero 
  • Rio Tinto​, Hero for Good 
  • Shionogi, Weathering the Change Hero 

What makes an innovator? These customers use our technologies, expertise and ecosystem to deliver better value to their customers and employees. Our innovators include: 

  • Infosys​, Anywhere Workspace Innovator 
  • AsiaPay, Security Transformation Innovator 
  • UnionBank of the Philippines​, Cloud Transformation Innovator 
  • First Bank, Modern Application Innovator 

Toyota Motor Corporation, Customer Experiences Hero 

Automotive manufacturers are in the midst of a "once-in-a-century transformation". Customers requests not only the value of the car itself, but also a smarter, more mobility experience. As a result, Toyota needs to continue to adapt and shift resources. Toyota’s strategy: reskill factory workers into digital talent.

The well-known brand partners with VMware Tanzu Labs to create in-house, rapid development teams in a short period of time. Tanzu Labs is helping to establish a new culture at Toyota through the practice of agile initiatives. Toyota's Cloud CoE (Centre of Excellence) team supports this program. What they are trying to achieve is to provide a better developer experience through this initiative. This strategy has allowed those who have thorough knowledge of the manufacturing sites — also known as GEMBA — well to effectively gain digital skills, and promote various experiences (employee/customer experience) both internally and externally.

Rio Tinto, Hero for Good

Mining leader Rio Tinto intends to reduce its carbon emissions by 50% in 2030 and to net zero by 2050. To do so, Rio Tinto uses VMware Tanzu and Greenplum to analyze and understand electricity usage during the production and processing of aluminum. 

Using cloud-native, big data technologies, Rio Tinto analyzed historical energy usage to identify spikes, leaks and areas in most need of metering. With greater visibility into how equipment uses energy, Rio Tinto empowers its leaders and engineers to address inefficiencies that save the company costs and move it closer to its net zero goal. 

“As part of our steps to hit 50% greenhouse gas emissions reduction by 2030, we needed insights into where electricity consumption inefficiencies existed, so that we could not only minimize preventable energy spikes but also redirect it to other meaningful uses.”

Dylan Urane, Automation Lead, Rio Tinto

Shionogi, Weathering the Change Hero

Shionogi is a leading Japanese pharmaceutical company headquartered in Osaka, Japan. In 2020, they announced the launch of “Shionogi Transformation Strategy 2030 (STS2030)”, which outlines their vision and growth strategy to realize their business transformation by 2030. The goal is to evolve as a healthcare provider through a new solution offering – Healthcare as a Service. 

Shionogi decided to adopt VMware's technology as they judged that VMware’s Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) and hybrid cloud solutions matched what they were looking for in their IT initiatives to achieve their goal. The modernized infrastructure and consistent operations through the implementation of the hybrid cloud is expected to reduce costs by approximately 30% over the next 6 years, allowing them to solve their challenges and meet their goals at a lower cost. 

“We appreciate VMware’s tremendous support from pre-proposal to implementation. This is truly the start of the process, and we look forward to achieving our goals together in this partnership.”

Ryohei Nishimura, IT Frontier Group Manager, IT & Digital Solution Dept., IT& Digital Solution Unit, DX Promotion Division, Shionogi 

Infosys BPM, Anywhere Workspace Innovator

Infosys BPM, the business process management arm of Infosys, offers end-to-end transformative BPM services for its clients across the globe out of India. It’s also recognized as a top employer for supporting its more than 56,000 employees with great working experiences.

Part of these experiences include the ability to securely work from anywhere. To make it happen, Infosys BPM remotely deployed and onboarded 24,000 devices in less than three months. With VMware Workspace ONE, Infosys cost-effectively manages these devices, delivers a seamless SaaS experience for admins and colleagues alike, and supports a distributed workforce.

“Our ability to onboard our clients improved significantly. So, what used to take about 2 weeks, has now been reduced to 2 or 3 days.”

Devesh Singh, Associate Practice Manager, Infosys

AsiaPay, Security Transformation Innovator

Banks and businesses around the world seek out the fastest, safest, easiest payment options for their customers. AsiaPay provides advanced, integrated and cost-effective digital payment solutions and services — from credit card processing to digital wallets with fraud detection and data analytics.  

AsiaPay’s state-of-the-art software-defined data center (SDDC) supports the stringent needs of data security and business compliance. It also enables fast, efficient and flexible services to meet the dynamic needs of AsiaPay’s fast-growing business. 

"Our VMware infrastructure helps us achieve the unprecedented levels of agility, quality, security and economics that modern business requires in its IT operations. It is imperative that we continually transcend our digital payment abilities to help businesses enhance their commerce strategies, fortify customers’ experiences, and drive growth.” 

Edward Lo, Associate Director, System Operation, AsiaPay 

UnionBank of the Philippines, Cloud Transformation Innovator

UnionBank underwent a cloud-only IT transformation to become a leading digitally-enabled bank. The multi-cloud innovator runs on VMware Cloud on AWS and on Azure VMware Solutions to be flexible and agile for exponential growth. 

With multi-cloud resources, UnionBank does everything faster: delivering products to market, recovering from deployment failures and responding to consumer needs. As a result, the Bank expands banking accessibility for consumers in underserved areas, driving greater financial inclusion in the Philippines.  

“Our enterprise-wide transformation is not just about migrating to the cloud; it’s also about our people – we're shifting gears so that we can move faster, but we have to ensure no one gets left behind.”

Dennis D. Omila, Chief Information Officer, UnionBank of the Philippines

First Bank, Modern Application Innovator

First Bank, a major bank in Taiwan, has been in business for over a century, but it’s nowhere near done growing and innovating. The Bank continues to introduce new financial products and services, form new partnerships and reach new markets. 

First Bank partners with Tanzu Labs to accelerate the development of its digital products and services and to support its business strategy. It’s banking on modern app development — microservices, containers, Kubernetes, etc. — to deliver better digital experiences across multiple channels. 

Congratulations to these heroes and innovators! Read about more heroes and innovators from VMware Explore U.S. and EMEA. For more breaking technology news, follow #VMwareExplore on social media.