As most of New Zealanders looked to wrap up their year in December 2024, we were delighted by the news of Microsoft opening its New Zealand North region in Auckland, a full Azure region with three availability zones. This has the Lancom Technology team excited, because it means a substantial and lasting boost to our service delivery capabilities. What you can expect with ‘Microsoft next door’ is faster, better, more reliable performance from practically every service – from Microsoft 365, to Azure, and everything in between. 

Before we get to unpacking some of the opportunities some of our people see, let’s run over the details of the new Azure region. Announced back in 2020, it represents an investment of many hundreds of millions of dollars (potentially into the billions – Microsoft doesn’t disclose the full cost). It also confirms the interest of a major vendor in Aotearoa: we’re on the Microsoft map in a big way! 

Our Technical Director Gregor Blaj says the new Azure means improved internal resilience for NZ as a nation: “For a long time, New Zealand organisations had to rely on the closest public cloud region in Sydney, sometimes leading to performance issues for latency sensitive line-of-business applications. With the launch of the Azure New Zealand North region, latency concerns are a thing of the past. Businesses and Government entities can finally migrate their remaining on-premises workloads to Azure without worrying about delays.” 

The new DC hosts a full range of Microsoft tools and services spanning the full range of technology activities including virtual machines, AI and machine learning services, networking, security, DevOps and yes, much, much more. 

The breath of the services available, enables Lancom to continue to fulfil its commitment of delivering leverage for customers, expanding our capabilities to support the strictest compliance requirements from Kiwi based organisations.  
Some of that has less to do with technical specifications, and more to do with presence and location, confirms our Senior Developer Andre Tupara Morrison. 

“Many kiwi-led organisations have faced challenges around indigenous data sovereignty, limiting cloud adoption. We're looking forward to seeing how Māori organisations and others across the motu will now harness Azure's capabilities to innovate and grow,” he explains. 

As part of Microsoft’s global data centre network, unique advantages have now arrived locally says Lancom Technology Principal Architect Cameron Roberts. “Specifically, resilience. The New Zealand North region is actually comprised of three separate data centres, each with multiple layers of redundancy for connectivity and power. This allows for highly available application and database configurations.” 

And sustainability matters for many organisations. While the country does incredibly well on the general availability of renewable power (88%, as mentioned), Microsoft has gone further: Cameron notes that the Aotearoa region is powered by 100% carbon free energy from day one using electricity from solar, wind and hydro sources. “Additionally, the new region reduces waste with air- instead of water-based cooling systems, aligning with Microsoft’s carbon negative mission while replenishing more water than it consumes.” 

It is still about the technology, though. Having a region in our backyard, including crucial Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings, improves the ability for technical teams to focus on new features and improvements, rather than having to manage legacy storage or database systems. 

Adoption and the path of value is a continuous process, that should be contextualised to factors that are important to organisations. If you want to discuss the opportunities the new region brings to your business, get in touch with us today: www.lancom.tech/contact-us