Catalyst Cloud was launched in 2015 to deliver both the benefits of local hosting and of public cloud.
Open source specialist Catalyst is putting the final touches on the first reseller agreement for its OpenStack-based Catalyst Cloud.
Catalyst Cloud manager Bruno Lago told Reseller News the new agreement was designed to be simple and flexible to accommodate different reseller models.
Lago said the reseller strategy is a result of organisations asking for the ability to resell Catalyst's New Zealand-based public cloud offering.
Two organisations, which he would not name due to non-disclosure agreements, had asked to resell but on very different models. One was a telco seeking to add network services to the cloud offering while the other was a managed services company seeking to sell services on top.
The two also proposed different go-to-market approaches, with one wanting to "white label" the cloud service and the other wanting to co-sell with Catalyst.
Lago said he thought Catalyst had come up with a simple model that could accommodate such different approaches with volume rebates kicking in as usage increased.
Resellers will retain the prime vendor relationship with the customer adding value to the cloud services, he said.
Lago was speaking after a Catalyst Cloud briefing in Auckland yesterday.
Earlier, Catalyst Auckland general manager Katrina Bassett said Catalyst Cloud came about after Catalyst went looking for cloud hosting five years ago and couldn't find anything suitable.
Discovering OpenStack, Catalyst originally planned to implement its own private cloud but then realised there was a gap in the market for a New Zealand-based public cloud.
The service was formally launched in February 2015, aiming to deliver similar functionality as AWS, but with the privacy benefits and no latency of local hosting.
Bassett said the last year had seen progress in the introduction of all-of-government pricing available to all agencies, asynchronously replicated object storage across cloud regions and the launch of a new cloud region in Hamilton to match the others in Wellington and Porirua.
Lago said 400 projects are now hosted on the cloud service.
