Microsoft Azure: Te Tumu Paeroa selected as anchor tenant in Microsoft’s planned New Zealand region

Te Tumu Paeroa, the office of the Maori Trustee, has signed an agreement to become the anchor tenant of Microsoft's upcoming New Zealand cloud region. The agreement with Microsoft and associated cloud migration is hoped to help landowners recover from major weather events more quickly, support innovation on key issues such as climate change, and collaborate more easily with other organizations.

"We're both a kaitiaki for the land, and for all the data relating to it. In Te Ao Maori, data carries the mana (identity), tapu (sacredness), and mauri (spirit) of the person and land it represents - and once you acknowledge that, it changes the way you handle and manage the data,” said Ruth Russell, chief information officer for Te Tumu Paeroa. “For that reason, our preference is to keep taonga for which we are a kaitiaki onshore, and not to send it overseas as other taonga have been."

DDS IT chief executive Simon Browne said: "What's been astounding beyond words is the deep sense of connection between the data, the whenua, and its people. Just as the move to the Azure data centers will benefit the land by reducing the data's carbon footprint, and the data by giving it greater resilience, better use of the data will help Aotearoa become more sustainable as well.”