New Zealand organisations are becoming highly attuned to the potential of cloud, and Dimension Data has noticed it’s the small to medium retail export businesses that are really jumping in head first.

While bigger companies, like the banks, might have done their testing and development on the cloud, they’re struggling to implement it fully because of the burden of their legacy infrastructure.

But the cloud natives have never known anything different – there’s nothing weighing them down. They’re nimble and progressive – quick to adopt the technology to give themselves a competitive advantage. Cloud gives them big company reach and big company credibility.

Dimension Data took a look at three New Zealand businesses – Kathmandu, Westland Milk, and Delegat’s Wine Estate. They’re each relatively small, export-oriented businesses, with a global vision, centred in New Zealand and using cloud in a way that suits them best.

Kathmandu and Westland Milk each use Dimension Data’s Managed Cloud Platform in Sydney, while Delegat’s uses a hybrid model – they built their own private cloud, and utilised some of Microsoft’s cloud services too.

“Microsoft, as a partner of Dimension Data, has a cloud platform that we encourage our clients to use if it’s appropriate," says James Walls, Technology Manager, Dimension Data.

“In our role as a cloud enabler, whether it’s ours, Microsoft’s, or their own, it doesn’t matter – we’re the ones to get our clients there. If they say cloud, we’ve got the options.”