Spark and Microsoft ink NZ’s ‘largest-ever Microsoft public cloud partnership’, including Copilot splash

Image / Getty Creative

Spark and Microsoft have signed what they’re billing as the country’s largest-ever Microsoft public cloud partnership.

The deal includes an AI focus. It will include “one of the largest Microsoft 365 Copilot deployments in New Zealand”, with an extra 1800 Spark staff getting Microsoft’s generative AI tool for a total of 2500 seats - or around half the telco’s staff.

It will also see Spark moving “a proportion of its workloads” to Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and Spark and Microsoft collaborate on hybrid cloud offerings for Spark’s business customers.

It will also cater to organisations who need to keep data within our borders for legal reasons with “A New Zealand-first commitment in advanced data residency for Spark’s Microsoft 365 tenants, providing customers the choice to access the benefits of onshore capacity”, the companies say.

And the two companies will also collaborate to fulfil Microsoft’s commitment to train 100,000 New Zealanders in AI and digital skills over the next two years, in part through online courses - a commitment made around the time the Overseas Investment Office approved Microsoft’s giant new hyperscale data centre, which opened in Auckland in December last year.

Terms were not disclosed.

Spark chief executive Jolie Hodson.

“It’s about further modernising our environments and about a better customer experience for our people and our customers. And then it’s about the better economics,” Spark CEO Jolie Hodson said.

The large scale Copilot deployment was part of an ongoing drive to upskill the telco’s staff on various AI products.

Vanessa Sorenson, managing director, Microsoft New Zealand.

“The telecom industry as a whole is embracing this technology [AI], and I just can’t wait to see how Spark is going to optimise business operations and modernise its networks and and unlock new revenue streams,” Microsoft New Zealand managing director Vanessa Sorenson said.

Microsoft's "hyperscale" data centre at Westgate in Auckland's northwest as it neared completion. It opened in December. Photo / Chris Keall

Spark’s IT services wing offers cloud products from a range of vendors. Last year, the telco was named an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Premier Tier Partner.

At its full-year result presentation in August last year, Spark said it was looking to raise up to $1 billion to expand its data centre operations over the next five to seven years, which include consented plans to build a facility at a new surf park north of Auckland.

Hodson said she could not give a progress update as the telco had entered a quiet period ahead of its first-half result, which will be delivered on Friday morning.

She did offer the broad observation that “Our ambitions haven’t changed around data centres ... Within our data centres, we serve a range of customers, both local enterprise, government, hyperscalers and other international customers. And this doesn’t change that. This is just an ongoing expansion of what we do together around the public cloud component of that, and also some of the AI tools.”

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.