Doug Dixon (Catalyst Cloud)
Catalyst Cloud will establish a new cloud region in Auckland in mid-2023 to join the company's three existing regions.
Adding to New Zealand-owned Catalyst Cloud’s regions in Wellington, Porirua and Hamilton, the new region would operate from a state-of-the-art facility accredited to support high security workloads.
CEO Doug Dixon said it will provide the availability and durability that customers require, while keeping their data and systems secure.
The Auckland region will consist of multiple availability zones, making it easier for customers to implement high availability patterns and practices, he said.
Networks created on demand by customers would span across all availability zones in an "all-active" model that made shifting internet-facing resources between locations easy, fast and able to be automated. Other resources can also be moved or automatically balanced between zones.
The fourth local facility would further also enhance Catalyst Cloud's data sovereignty story for customers seeking to ensure their data was not subject to overseas laws or access.
"Being locally owned, Catalyst Cloud is subject exclusively to NZ laws and privacy regulations," Dixon said. "Not only does your data never leave our shores, it never leaves our legal jurisdiction."
This was critical for data sovereignty and also aligned with principles of Māori data sovereignty, he said.
"Our mission is to build a strategic cloud capability that is free from overseas control, that provides opportunities to grow our local tech industry and talent pool, that honours Te Tiriti o Waitangi and that continually invests back into our economy for future generations," Dixon said.
Catalyst Cloud operated a true public cloud, as defined by the NIST definition of cloud computing, Dixon said.
"We don't cloudwash legacy solutions and we're not reselling someone else's cloud. We provide a wide range of cloud services that will already feel familiar to engineers who have used other cloud providers," he added.
Minister for the digital economy and communications David Clark welcomed the announcement.
"Protecting people’s data and privacy is critically important to the government," he said. "Onshore cloud facilities give us stronger control of New Zealand’s data because it is held here, where our laws and protections apply."
Clark said taken together with cloud investments already announced by Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, local businesses and communities would be able to access international cloud service providers as well as home-grown options such as Catalyst Cloud, Datacom and Revera.
Catalyst Cloud joined the all-of-government cloud framework procurement agreement in March and is also Toitū net carbon zero certified.
