IT management and cloud services company CCL has today announced a three-year partnership with Microsoft.

The move is designed to drive New Zealand business and public sector migration to Microsoft Azure cloud technologies.

The announcement comes almost exactly a year after CCL, owned by Spark, was merged with another Spark entity, Revera, to create the largest New Zealand-focused IT services company.

The partnership with Microsoft also indicates the continued transformation of CCL from an in-country platform and IT specialist to a multi-cloud evangelist, which was kicked off initially by the Revera merger.

According to CCL Microsoft will support the New Zealand company build its Azure expertise to enable the reseller to meet the demand for tailored Microsoft Azure and Azure Stack solutions.

The expanded partnership comes at a time where research from IDC reports that revenue from managed cloud services is expected to hit $1 billion in 2023 – doubling from the $582 million reported last year.

“Our focus has always been on enabling Kiwi businesses to successfully adopt cloud technologies, but this is the next step in our evolution to become the most trusted New Zealand IT and cloud services provider,” says CCL chief executive officer Andrew Allan.

“In order to lead technology discussions with our clients, we knew we needed to evolve the conversation from a purely in-country ‘as-a-Service' solution, to exploring what is best suited for our customers and how we can enable that.

Allan says the potential revenue opportunities meant the collaboration with Microsoft was a big win.

“This partnership with Microsoft truly allows us to continue to build our Azure expertise and develop complementary products and services that will ultimately translate into tangible wins for New Zealand businesses,” says Allan.

Microsoft general manager of New Zealand Barrie Sheers says the partnership reflects the hunger for scalable, secure cloud platforms that will enable New Zealand organisations to realise the benefits of AI, big data and other modern technologies.

“Microsoft's research shows innovation and productivity in New Zealand organisations are set to rise at least 50% by 2021 thanks to AI adoption, while the government is focused on providing secure, accessible, digital services to all New Zealanders,” says Sheers.

“However, none of this would be possible without the massive scalability and flexibility of the public and hybrid cloud.

“That's why partnerships to accelerate cloud migration are so important. Our agreement with CCL is an exciting opportunity for us to support even more organisations to digitally transform, realise significant gains and deliver better service to their customers.