Why Kiwi software companies are moving from old cloud to new cloud – and from old business model to SaaS business model – in the race to be more innovative and competitive on the global stage.
If New Zealand’s software sector were an Olympic kayaker, it would be Dame Lisa Carrington. The sector is growing faster than any other contributor to GDP, surging out in front like Carrington in an Olympic kayak sprint. And the tech sector is just hitting its stride. But while it’s amazing to watch a series of tech businesses from little old New Zealand go global, growth and popularity can also bring new challenges, like increased expectation from customers and a raft of new competitors, each wanting to take market share.
In the race to stay competitive and relevant, as well as open new doors and opportunities, technology businesses are upgrading their tech stack and embracing the benefits of hyperscale cloud. If they are on old on-prem private cloud solutions, they’re now looking to use hyperscale public cloud to upgrade, scale at speed and be more resilient. Even organisations embracing multi-cloud infrastructure are finding new ways to unify and simplify their operations using innovations like Azure Arc.
As the software sector in New Zealand matures, we’re seeing a transition from old cloud to new cloud, and from old business models to new SaaS-based business models. And, it’s driving some serious innovation, as well as a re-think of business operations across people, processes and technology.
The future of cinema lies in the cloud
Operating behind the scenes of the cinema industry, Vista may not be a household name, but it’s one of New Zealand’s most successful technology and software companies. It provides cinema management software to more than half of the world’s large cinemas (excluding China) and employs more than 600 people across global offices. Vista’s software helps cinemas manage everything from ticket scheduling and front of house ticket kiosks, to staff rostering and even customer marketing.
Up until 2021, the majority of its customers were using Vista’s classic software suite. However, as Grant Smith, Chief Operating Officer at Vista explains, this was creating challenges when it came to helping customers grow.
“The majority of our customers were using our classic Vista system, which is delivered as an on-premises solution, but we recognised there was a better way to deliver innovation and value to our customers. Some customers had created lift and shift implementations of our classic products in private and self-managed cloud contexts, but they found realising the true benefits of cloud was really limited. We saw a clear need to create a cloud-first, software as a service offering – one that Vista could secure, optimise and manage, to truly unlock the benefits of Cloud, and really critically, deliver new innovation into the hands of our customers much faster.”
Vista Cloud was born, designed to leverage cloud-native technology on Microsoft Azure to scale as the cinema industry recovers after the impacts of the pandemic.
“By harnessing the power of public cloud, we can provide a fully hosted, managed and monitored software solution that makes running a cinema successfully as easy as possible. It enables cinema teams to benefit from Vista’s ongoing investment in innovation and technology much more rapidly, as well as massively reducing the infrastructure and management overheads that come with on-prem servers. We’re now offering faster access to innovation with automatic updates, greater reliability with automatic scaling during peak ticketing events, as well as offline availability, increased security, and access anytime, anywhere for remote workers.”
The future for Vista is all about expansion and growth. It wants to further develop its capability, expand the reach of the platform and grow its customer base even further. Embracing “new” public cloud has been integral to this.
Each year Vista dedicates tens of millions of dollars to research and development to help alleviate the pain points for both cinema customers and moviegoers. Now the time it invests in this R&D can deliver value for its customers faster, without burdening cinemas with having to update the solution on their side.
“We develop and deliver significant updates multiple times a year with our classic software suite, but due to that natural friction that exists with deploying on-prem updates across a large estate, often the benefits of all that hard work wouldn’t be felt by our end-users for as much as 18 months. With a cloud-native solution, we overcome that friction: we dramatically increase the go-to-market speed of new features and provide more immediate value for our customers.”
Software that rocks
Then there’s Seequent, a geoscience technology company that brings together industry-leading earth modelling, geo-data management, and team collaboration software to help geoscientists make more informed decisions about the subsurface.
Seequent, acquired by Bentley Systems (BSY) in June last year for over $1 billion, originally started out within the mining sector. It is growing at a serious pace, driven in part by its decision to explore new sectors beyond mining, such as civil, environmental, and energy (mainly in the renewable space). However, to do that it needed its solution to be able to scale quickly and its old on-premises solution wasn’t up to the task. Like Vista, it started from scratch and moved everything into Microsoft Azure, but it wasn’t all smooth sailing, as Penny Swords, the Director of Seequent Evo explains.
“The mining sector has been slower than other sectors with regards to digital transformation. So, at first we received a bit of pushback around the move to cloud. However, that is changing with in the industry with many mining organisations investing heavily in cloud technology. Once they started to see the added functionality, resilience, connectivity, and security we could provide through native cloud applications, we won them over with Seequent Central in the cloud.”
Having developed Seequent Central, the company then capitalised on the huge global marketplace for cloud products. Working with Uwa Airhiavbere, Director of Microsoft’s Worldwide Oil & Gas sector, Seequent took advantage of Microsoft’s co-sell programme for SaaS partners, securing two new energy clients. This demonstrates the opportunities for New Zealand businesses to truly go global and seize leads in new markets with the support of Microsoft and the cloud’s ‘anytime, anywhere’ reach.
As an innovation bonus, being in the cloud has also enabled the creation of Seequent Evo, an ecosystem that connects geoscience cloud capabilities, API’s, partner applications, and Seequent desktop solutions. As well as allowing customers to work seamlessly across their workflows, Evo automates manual tasks and enables advanced analysis on large data sets much faster than before through the use of artificial intelligence and machines learning. By connecting software and adding the power of the cloud, Evo transforms how Seequent’s customers work, allowing them to make better decisions, faster.
And, now that Seequent can scale, it’s leading to different opportunities, like the way it’s helping Microsoft drive change for good around water quality and conservation. Microsoft has committed to replenishing more water than it consumes by 2030 and Seequent is one of the four partners we’re working with in our goal to achieve this.
New cloud is the future
What excites us the most is that these are just two examples of how moving from on-premises solutions to public cloud is helping grow tech businesses as well as their customers. Every day we’re taking calls and working closely with tech partners to help take them from old cloud to new cloud, and to support them wholistically in the fundamental business changes needed to become a true SaaS company. And with the imminent arrival of Microsoft’s hyperscale datacenter region in New Zealand looming ever nearer, the silver lining to that cloud is only going to get bigger.