Todd has strengthened resilience and reduced operational risk across its IT environment in partnership with Datacom.
A shift from ageing on-premise infrastructure, a rethink of commodity services delivery and a surprising flip on backup and recovery, has enabled Todd to operate in a more cost-effective manner and focus resources on core business priorities, while retaining control and expertise in key areas and systems.
The result is a more stable, sustainable operating model that gives Todd greater confidence in its ability to support the organisation today and adapt for the future.
“By simplifying our technology landscape and partnering for commodity services, we’re shifting our focus from running IT to enabling the business with greater resilience and consistency,” says James Blair, Group Manager, Technology and Security, Todd.
Todd is a family-owned New Zealand company established over a century ago. In addition to its core operating energy businesses, Todd Energy and Nova Energy, Todd has investments in natural healthcare, property and minerals. Its IT environment supports the energy businesses and a highly diverse workforce, ranging from corporate offices to industrial and remote operational sites.
As part of transitioning to a new operating model, the organisation reviewed opportunities to reduce costs and streamline operations, including the technology and security team, where there was scope to simplify service delivery and improve resilience while retaining specialist capability in-house.
“Nothing was off the table,” says Keith Chamberlain, Technology Operations Manager, Todd. However, full outsourcing was quickly ruled out due to the organisation’s niche requirements across its core operating businesses, including energy production, electricity generation, safety and control systems, and cybersecurity, which remained in-house. Todd needed a partner that could take on commodity IT services while allowing its internal teams to focus on areas where specialist knowledge and tacit experience were essential.
Todd issued RFIs to several service providers, including Datacom, to understand what a partnership could look like and how different approaches might support its goals.
“Datacom’s position was really different,” says Chamberlain. “As opposed to a broad estimate with no clarity, they were very transparent. They presented an all-you-can-eat solution, but everything was actually itemised.”
Datacom worked through Todd’s environment in detail, looking at where services could be delivered more efficiently and where it made sense for Todd to retain responsibility.
“We sat down with Datacom for a week in Wellington and focused on the parts where it made sense for a cost opportunity and where Datacom could provide a commodity-type service,” says Chamberlain.
Those discussions were open and highly detailed, covering everything from service volumes and locations to operational impact and risk.
“After a week, it was not only clear that Datacom could provide select services at a cost advantage to our business, but that it had capabilities and experts that we could call on at any time,” he says. “It wasn’t just about reducing cost; we also focused on which services the business only needed occasionally that would be better provided by a partner for a defined period.”
The outcome was a partnership model where Datacom took responsibility for services such as service desk, device management and most onsite engineering functions, while Todd retained control of its specialist systems.
One of the most significant outcomes of the process was something Todd did not initially set out to do. During discussions, the scope expanded to include infrastructure hosting, including backup and recovery, in Datacom’s private hosted cloud environment.
“The most surprising thing that fell out of that week-long conversation was our infrastructure hosting,” says Chamberlain. “We thought we would be managing our own physical infrastructure inside data centres.”
Todd had previously assumed that a hosted model would be too expensive and too disruptive. Working through the details with Datacom changed that view.
“After two days of working it up, we completely flipped our strategy,” he says. “It changed from a two-year strategy to a three-month plan.”
The migration, including standing up relevant backup and recovery options, was completed in around 12 weeks.
“We wanted to ensure we could recover from any major event,” says Chamberlain. “Backup and recoverability are now more robust than we’ve ever had in the past. We’ve tested and proved it already.”
For Todd, the move reduced risk, freed up internal resources and avoided a large scale, disruptive infrastructure refresh.
“It turned out to be almost seamless,” he says. “Now it’s maintained and I don’t have to worry about it, neither do my engineers.”
Todd operates across New Zealand, with offices and operational sites in locations including Auckland, Wellington, New Plymouth, Tauranga and Whakatāne, as well as numerous rural and industrial sites supporting production operations and energy generation.
“Only about 20% of our organisation is in a hub like Auckland or Wellington,” says Chamberlain. “We have over 20 different sites, ranging from small offices to industrial facilities with high hazards.”
That geographic spread was a key consideration when selecting a partner.
“We needed a partner that could support us where we operated, not just in the major cities,” he says.
As a New Zealand-owned business, Datacom’s on-the-ground ability to service both major centres and remote locations helped Todd simplify its IT operations without compromising responsiveness or resilience. The partnership continues to support Todd’s focus on sustainable growth, operational stability and long-term value for its New Zealand business.
“Our approach as a managed services provider is deliberately open and flexible,” says Santana Faint, Datacom Director of Customer Delivery, Modern Platforms. “We worked alongside Todd to tailor the model they wanted to retain institutional expertise in-house while offering the ability to evolve services as their needs change. Being able to plug Todd into Datacom’s wider portfolio, in this case, hosted cloud, is an example of this.”
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