In May, Catalyst Cloud hosted events in Wellington and Auckland, titled “Look to New Zealand: The State of Aotearoa Cloud in 2024.” This three-part series explores the presenters key insights and future potential of New Zealand's cloud technology. Part one recaps Don Christie’s presentation “Global Trends and the Relevance to New Zealand”.

Don is the Managing Director of Catalyst IT. He has a passion for data sovereignty, open source technologies and champions New Zealanders believing in home-grown technical capability.

The birth of Catalyst Cloud

Back in 2010, Don attended an AWS talk that sparked a realisation: New Zealand companies needed API-driven infrastructure management and micro-billing for virtual machines (VMs). However, he believed this capability should be developed, operated, and owned entirely within New Zealand to give the country more control over its data. But, how could a Kiwi business, much smaller than AWS, design and build a cloud specifically for New Zealand businesses? The solution was OpenStack.

OpenStack, a modular, open-source cloud-building platform initially developed by NASA, RackSpace, and CERN, was designed for hyper-scale from the get-go. Its principles of collaboration and openness perfectly aligned with Catalyst’s vision and values. So, in 2012, Catalyst Cloud was born, using OpenStack as its backbone.

The current state of Aotearoa cloud in 2024

Since Catalyst Cloud's inception, IT trends have been a cyclical. We moved from the era of mainframes (centralisation) to PCs on every desk (decentralisation), then to the internet and cloud (centralisation). According to Don, the tides are now moving towards a federated IT approach. The EU and South Korea are leading this change, shifting their mentality from large, centralised, US-owned cloud data centres and instead investing in localised computing capabilities.

The rise of federated computing

The European Union is already investing millions of Euros in localised computing capabilities, aiming for a balance of 20% centralised and 80% edge-based federated computing. South Korea is adopting a similar approach with the creation of over 300 “data-dams”. Much of the digital world is moving in this direction, but the dominance of US voices favouring centralisation under US-owned companies means this approach is not widely promoted in New Zealand.

Benefits of a federated cloud model

A federated model offers specific advantages for New Zealand:

• Data sovereignty: Repatriating data allows the country to assert judicial control over citizen and company data, aligning with Te Tiriti o Waitangi and protecting the interests of all New Zealanders.

• Innovation: This model shifts New Zealand companies from being mere consumers to innovators at the forefront of cloud technologies. By leveraging a federated approach, New Zealand can replicate its successes in sport, agriculture, and even rocket science, establishing itself as a leader in cloud innovation.

Why New Zealand needs a multi-data centre (DC) approach

Given New Zealand’s geological youth and relatively small size, a “multi-DC” approach is essential to prevent natural or ecological disasters from disrupting key platforms, systems, and businesses. With power-supply issues being so critical (as shown by recent outages across the country), large, single-location, power-hungry data centres owned by foreign companies are a less than ideal solution.

How you can improve your cloud strategy

Don made a surprising admission in his presentation: people are actually paying cloud providers too much. This often happens because users put all their eggs in one basket and get “locked-in.” However, advances in technology now support multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud strategies, helping users overcome the "locked-in" nature of many centralised cloud environments. With containers and Kubernetes, running multiple cloud environments is easier than ever. This flexibility allows us to blend clouds, work on-premises when needed, and decentralise from large data centres.

Adopting a multi-cloud or hybrid cloud strategy helps you to:

• cut down on cloud spending

• support specific application or business needs with the right cloud

• repatriate data as needed.

All while following the federated approach championed by the EU and APAC.

This is the exciting opportunity ahead for cloud in New Zealand - according to Don, we just need to seize it.

But how do we make this happen? And how can local cloud providers support New Zealand businesses in achieving their cloud goals?

Continue on with Part 2: The Local Provider Context – Paul Seiler, Catalyst Cloud to find out.