Better governance, stronger prioritisation and greater cloud maturity are helping Transpower maximise the value of its AWS investment.
Despite having a relatively small footprint, Transpower’s AWS environment supports important corporate and enterprise services including planning activities, customer engagement, data and analytics workloads, an OpenShift cluster and field mobility services. These are kept separate from the systems used to operate the national grid, which Transpower treats as critical services and runs in a separate realm without internet access.
Within the organisation, the infrastructure team is responsible for guiding cloud strategy and ensuring services continue to deliver value as business needs evolve. Working with Ram Arunachalam, a consultant from Datacom’s Cloud Transformation team, Transpower's infrastructure team has developed a more effective approach to cloud optimisation. This is enabling better-informed technology decisions and helping Transpower navigate complex technical and stakeholder challenges with confidence.
The outcome builds on a cloud modernisation journey in which Transpower chose Datacom to work on a revamped cloud environment. Following the implementation of a modernised landing zone, Transpower wanted to maintain the momentum and make the most of Datacom’s cloud consulting experience, rather than treating the work as a one-off modernisation effort.
So, the focus shifted to using Arunachalam’s expertise to evolve Transpower’s cloud community of practice to strengthen how decisions were prepared and to help ensure the platform remains current, well governed and aligned to changing business needs.
Because he already understood the organisation’s cloud platform, technology landscape and ways of working, he was able to quickly add value across multiple teams.
Working alongside Transpower’s cloud community of practice architects, developers and operational teams, he acted as a connector between governance and delivery.
Arunachalam worked with Transpower teams to develop and refine cloud frameworks, standards and reusable patterns that could be applied consistently across the organisation. He also supported architects and delivery teams with practical guidance on cloud-native design, Infrastructure-as-Code practices, helping ensure new initiatives aligned with established best practice.
As new AWS services and capability became available, Arunachalam provided advice on where they could support Transpower’s goals and where adoption would have the greatest impact.
“One of the biggest wins is that we are no longer waiting until an application team gets to a formal review process before we start asking whether they have considered different options,” says Transpower Design and Infrastructure Manager, Cloud Service Owner, Piroska Meszoly. “Because Ram has now built rapport and understands our platform, our business and our constraints, he can advise application architects and help shape a pathway early. That means we can have early and more proactive engagement with our peers, rather than dealing with requests in an ad hoc way.
“Ram brings amazing technical knowledge of AWS, but the value is also in how he shares that expertise,” says Meszoly. “He is active in the wider AWS community, he brings that knowledge back to Transpower and he helps lift the capability of our own cloud community of practice through lunch-and-learn sessions, advice and ongoing knowledge sharing.
“Having that kind of expertise available to our architects and developers has been a huge improvement. It helps people engage earlier, ask better questions and make the right choices before work has gone too far down a particular path. That has improved both our decision-making and the culture around cloud.”
Datacom Practice Lead Desiree Kovaleski says, “Our cloud experts don’t just advise from the outside. They go in, learn the customer’s environment and, for all intents and purposes, become part of their team. That close working relationship means we can bring Datacom’s wider cloud expertise to the table in a way that is practical, relevant and focused on helping the customer make better decisions.”
Beyond the advisory role, Transpower benefited from access to Datacom’s broader cloud expertise. Where specialist support was required, Transpower was able to lean on experts in Datacom’s Cloud Transformation practice. This included support areas such as cost optimisation, secure connectivity, cloud integrations, permission management and terraform refactoring.
The is not simply access to technical expertise, but a practical mechanism for turning advice into action. By bringing together the right skills at the right time, Datacom helps Transpower address challenges quickly while maintaining momentum on its cloud roadmap.
The success of the engagement is reflected by its longevity, as Transpower has extended the partnership. Today it is benefiting from stronger cloud governance, reusable cloud patterns and greater confidence in its AWS decision-making.
For Transpower, cloud maturity is not a destination but a continuous process. With Datacom acting as a trusted advisor, the organisation is better positioned to evolve its cloud environment while continuing to support the reliable delivery of electricity across New Zealand.
Datacom’s Sixth Annual Cloud and Infrastructure Report found that 50% of organisations using the cloud had yet to see the benefits they expected due to complexity and a lack of skills.
Datacom Director of Cloud Mike Walls says cloud adoption is only the first step.
“To realise the full value of cloud, organisations also need to adapt and modernise their architectures, workloads and ways of working. That can be challenging when skills are in short supply and complexity is increasing. This engagement shows how Datacom provides expertise to help our customers optimise and benefit from their cloud environment.”
Technology is vital to every part of your business and having modern scalable platforms and digital experiences is now key to success, while unpredictable events from global uncertainty to cyber threats are driving the need for greater resilience. This shows us that modern cloud solutions and reliable partners are more important than ever.
