Getting to know Daniel Aw, Vice President & General Manager, Red Hat APAC

We are delighted to welcome Daniel Aw in his new role as the general manager for Red Hat’s Asia Pacific region. In this role, Daniel will lead the next phase of the company’s growth in the region, and advance customer success with AI and open hybrid cloud technology.  

Daniel brings more than three decades of international experience driving customer satisfaction, sales, and revenue growth. He is known for successfully scaling profitable businesses and expanding operations across Asia Pacific. Prior to this role, Daniel led Red Hat’s enterprise business in the region, helping customers accelerate digital transformation through Red Hat’s open culture, processes, and technology.

We caught up with Daniel to hear his perspectives on open source and Red Hat, and his insights on leadership.

Q: Daniel, having spent the last four years at Red Hat, what inspired you to the open source world and work at Red Hat?

My perception of open source was initially limited to Linux, but my time at Red Hat has shown me how open source technology is the essential, trusted backbone for many critical applications from mobile payments and flight booking to border immigration systems often running on Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. 

What excites me is the sheer speed of open source innovation. It flips the proprietary model, inviting customers to become active co-creators. By collaborating directly with Red Hat engineers and the global upstream communities, customers can influence priorities and accelerate development in a way that leads to stronger, more secure solutions..

This collaborative co-innovation elevates the vendor client dynamic into a true partnership where success is mutual. I strongly believe in Red Hat’s philosophy that “open source unlocks the world’s potential”, and I am energized by the opportunity to help customers move faster and more confidently through open source innovation.

Q: In your new role leading the APAC region, can you share your vision for the region?

Asia Pacific is incredibly diverse, moving so fast technologically, and dealing with unique regulatory situations in every country. Knowing this, my vision is to make the AI ready open hybrid cloud the essential foundation our customers rely on to meet today’s challenges and seize tomorrow’s opportunities

This vision really speaks to what I believe are the three things that keep APAC leaders up at night:  

• Data and digital sovereignty: With regulations getting tighter everywhere, being able to choose exactly where your data and applications live is crucial. Our open hybrid cloud gives that flexibility, making compliance and sovereignty much easier to manage.
• A stronger security posture: Cyber threats continue to evolve, and organizations need a comprehensive, modern security approach. Our open technologies naturally provide a consistent platform approach that reduces attack surfaces while providing the transparency needed to defend against threats across all environments.
• Smarter operations and speed: Economic pressure means everyone needs to be more efficient and faster to market. Standardizing on an open hybrid cloud platform can simplify operations and speed up their development cycles.

Finally, embracing AI is no longer a question about when but how; it’s an immediate necessity. Our focus is on providing the secure, scalable, and open infrastructure they need to build, deploy, and manage AI/ML models everywhere from the edge to the core data center and the cloud unlocking a whole new level of business innovation.

Q: To realize this vision in APAC can you share some of your immediate priorities?

My priorities are practical and focused on three areas:

1. Deepening our partnership with our key customers: This means moving beyond just being a vendor to becoming a true strategic partner. We want to help customers maximize the value of their investment in open source and Red Hat by working side by side on innovation, doing joint planning for success, and proactively helping them overcome their biggest barriers to adoption and scaling. We are committed to helping them make the open hybrid cloud platform the very heart of their enterprise IT strategy, delivering real business outcomes like lower costs, faster innovation, and better security resilience.
2. Welcoming new and early stage customers: There’s a big opportunity to connect with organizations that are just starting their Red Hat journey or haven't fully tapped into the power of enterprise open source yet. This priority is all about targeted engagement showing them the tangible benefits of the open hybrid cloud model and how Red Hat can solve their specific business problems, whether it's simplifying application development or modernizing older systems.
3. Collaborating even more closely with our ecosystem partners: Red Hat’s success in APAC is tied to the strength of our partner ecosystem, including technology partners, ISVs, SIs, and channel partners. The aim is to create a united front to deliver complete, outcome based solutions for our customers. This will involve joint go-to-market efforts, robust training programs for our partners, and making sure they are fully equipped to sell, implement, and support the entire AI ready open hybrid cloud portfolio. 

On a personal level, I plan to be highly engaged on ground spending time with our customers and partners across the region to understand their unique market pressures, operational needs, and strategic goals. Staying close to the field is essential to adopting and successfully deploying our open solutions, ensuring Red Hat remains the most trusted and valued partner in APAC's digital future.

Q. As AI adoption accelerates across APAC, what excites you most, and how do you see open source enabling this transformation?

As an engineer and tech enthusiast, I find myself captivated by the sheer magnitude of possibilities that AI is beginning to unveil, particularly the profound and transformative impact AI can have on global business operations and how it will fundamentally reshape the way we live, work, and interact with the world around us.

Open source is a critical component in the wider evolution and successful, ethical adoption of AI technology. Its transparency, collaborative spirit, and accessibility makes it indispensable for building trust and ensuring broad based engagement. The development and deployment of AI need to be guided by principles of openness and a strong, unwavering ethical framework. Open source inherently provides this necessary foundation, offering a transparent ledger and a community driven governance model that can withstand scrutiny.

It is also encouraging to see how far open source AI models and tools have come. In many cases, their capabilities and pace of innovation now rival, or even surpass, proprietary alternatives.

Q: Looking back on your career, can you share some of the key learnings or insights from your leadership journey?

While I became a formal people manager later in my career, my leadership foundation was established long before. As an individual contributor working on large, complex transformation projects, I often had to lead multiple, cross functional teams often comprising internal resources, partners, and customer personnel without any direct reporting authority.

I strongly believe that these intensive years spent as a leader a role defined by influence, vision setting, and cross team collaboration served as the most rigorous and effective training ground for my later responsibilities as a formal people manager. This experience equipped me not just with management techniques but with deep seated leadership maturity, allowing me to confidently step into roles leading increasingly larger teams.

My observation, however, is that there is a pervasive and perhaps misdirected eagerness among many of our key talents today. They often appear overly focused on the rapid attainment of a managerial title and position, sometimes at the expense of cultivating the fundamental skills of leadership and influence. True mastery lies in the ability to fine tune these non hierarchical skills, allowing one to effectively manage and lead disparate teams to successfully solve the most intricate and complex business problems. The title is merely an enabler; the ability to lead, persuade, and unify is the true engine of complex problem solving and career longevity.