Rethinking IT for growing New Zealand businesses
The baseline requirements for adequate IT have increased significantly, but most growing New Zealand organisations still operate with resource models designed for a much simpler environment.
Reactive IT support and vendor sprawl create compounding security, governance and operational problems that become harder to address over time.
A deliberately designed operating model combines proactive support with strategic guidance, shifting technology from a constant source of friction to something that actively supports business growth.
As organisations grow, fragmented infrastructure, security gaps and operational inefficiencies become harder to ignore. Many New Zealand mid-market organisations find themselves stuck in a reactive cycle of putting out fires when their IT operating model fails to keep pace with the business.
Adam Mercer leads Datacom's Unify practice, working with growing New Zealand organisations to design IT operating models that fit how they really run. Working with mid-market organisations, he sees firsthand why the gap between what's needed and what's in place continues to widen.
The baseline requirements for "adequate IT" have increased significantly in recent years. Cloud management, hybrid work, endpoint security, compliance obligations, cyber insurance requirements and emerging AI readiness are all part of what a credible IT posture now needs to cover. Yet many growing New Zealand organisations still operate with resource models designed for a much simpler environment.
That mismatch is rarely the result of poor decisions. Organisations have responded rationally to individual pressures over time – a new security vendor when ransomware became a board concern, a cloud migration partner when remote work became permanent, a contractor when the internal person couldn't cover everything. Each decision made sense at the time, but the cumulative effect is often a patchwork of technologies and vendors that nobody designed as a whole and nobody fully owns.
The IT operating model was never redesigned because there was never time to step back and do it. That's understandable, especially for leaders who are managing technology alongside many other priorities and may not have a dedicated CIO or even a single full-time IT person.
But the demands keep growing, and the patchwork keeps getting heavier.
The reactive cycle and the hidden tax of vendor coordination
Behind the scenes, reliance on a reactive IT partner is often what keeps an IT operating model stuck in place.
Traditional reactive IT support arrangements, which remain common in New Zealand, focus on defined monthly services and break-fix activities, often treating proactive guidance and strategic advice as optional extras. A proactive approach – where issues are caught and resolved before they cause outages – looks very different. When your IT partner is doing their job well, you rarely need to call them.
The downstream effects of reactive support go beyond outages. When your IT setup has accumulated rather than been designed, vendor relationships multiply without coordination. Each vendor covers their own domain, but nobody owns the spaces between them. When an issue spans two vendors, the internal IT person becomes an unpaid project manager for their own suppliers, which is not a line item anyone tracks, but it consumes a significant proportion of the scarcest resource these organisations have: the time and attention of people who should be doing something else.
Vendor sprawl also limits economies of scale and reduces purchasing power, all while increasing complexity, operational overhead and integration challenges. While a best-of-breed approach has its merits, it can leave mid-market organisations with oversized products that don't talk to each other, overlooking the capabilities of existing IT investments and SaaS alternatives that could reduce maintenance and upgrade obligations.
The result is an environment where those responsible for IT spend most of their time responding to emergencies rather than planning for the future. Security, governance and strategic direction all suffer as a consequence.
"Datacom has been a fantastic IT partner to Emma Lewisham, supporting us since the very beginning. Their team is responsive, reliable and genuinely proactive – ensuring our people always have the tools and support they need to do their best work. We are consistently impressed by their professionalism and willingness to help, and knowing we can depend on them lets us stay focused on growing the business. We really value them as our IT partner."
– Emma Lewisham, Co-Founder, Emma Lewisham Skincare
Security that looks adequate until you scratch the surface
Those responsible for managing IT in small and mid-market organisations can make the mistake of assuming that cybersecurity and governance only apply to the big end of town. That assumption is becoming increasingly risky. As enterprise-grade security becomes more mature, small and mid-market organisations are seen as softer targets.
Security that relies on a reactive approach often looks robust on the surface. But hidden weaknesses are common: endpoint protection is in place but network monitoring isn't, detection runs during business hours but not overnight, there's an incident response plan on paper but no tested playbook behind it. Security isn't just about hardening defences – it's also about ensuring resilience when a security incident does occur.
A reactive "don't fix it unless it breaks" approach often results in unsupported networking equipment and unpatched devices that leave the organisation exposed. Weak end-user device management is another common gap – inconsistent Windows updates, antivirus deployment and password enforcement. If workstations aren't enrolled in Microsoft Intune and Autopilot, IT teams can struggle to set up and manage Windows devices without manual imaging.
Microsoft 365's Secure Score is a useful tool for uncovering these issues objectively. It measures an organisation's security posture and assigns a score out of 100. Generally, a score above 75 to 80 percent indicates most core identity, device and data safeguards are in place.
It's not uncommon to encounter scores in the low 20s when first engaging with a new customer. That's not because anyone has been negligent, it's because security is not set-and-forget. Scores drift downward over time, even after a one-off security overhaul, unless someone is actively reviewing and maintaining the posture on an ongoing basis.
Security improvements also need to be introduced progressively to limit business disruption, user resistance and change fatigue. That's where a proactive partner who helps sequence the work and guides the organisation through the journey makes a real difference, compared to a one-off project that's handed over and left.
"Datacom's technical team delivered an exceptional experience throughout our firewall replacement project. The team was knowledgeable, personable and always willing to answer questions. The installation and outage window ran incredibly smoothly – a refreshing change compared to previous experiences with other suppliers. We were thoroughly impressed with the professionalism and quality of service provided."
– Violet Willoughby-Raill, IT & Operations Manager, Mayne Wetherell
What changes when IT is deliberately designed
The alternative to a reactive patchwork is an operating model that has been deliberately designed – where support, monitoring, governance and strategic direction operate as a coherent whole rather than separate pieces accumulated over time.
In practice, the shift becomes visible quickly. Instead of managing multiple vendor relationships with gaps between them, there's a single point of accountability across the environment. Instead of reacting to outages, proactive monitoring and maintenance catches issues before they affect the business. Instead of technology decisions being made in isolation as problems arise, there are regular, forward-looking planning conversations.
Most New Zealand mid-market organisations run on Microsoft – 365, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Windows devices, identity and cloud services. A well-designed operating model needs to properly manage this environment, not just keep the lights on. That means active tenancy management, identity and access controls, device management, patching and security reviews as part of the ongoing rhythm rather than periodic extras. A unified approach isn't about replacing what you have. It's about managing it properly and getting more value from the platforms you already rely on.
One of the most telling indicators of the shift is what happens in monthly review meetings. In a reactive model, these tend to focus on what went wrong and what needs fixing. In a designed model, they quickly move to future planning, with around 75 percent of the conversation focused on upcoming initiatives and business direction. That forward-looking approach creates a 12 to 18-month roadmap for future initiatives, giving CFOs the visibility they need for financial planning rather than being surprised by ad hoc technology requests.
"Datacom took over from our previous supplier a while ago and have done an incredible job of settling the noise in our IT environment and powering everything we do here at NZCIS, from the Phoenix and Hurricanes through to NZ Rugby and beyond. Thank you for all the work that's done behind the scenes, as it enables us to perform at our best on the field. We look forward to continuing the partnership in the years ahead."
– Peter Thomas, CEO, Gillies Group Facilities Management
From patchwork to plan
The challenge isn't that most growing organisations have the wrong technology - it's that the operating model supporting that technology hasn't evolved alongside the business. That's the problem Unify was designed to solve. Unify brings together proactive support, security, governance and strategic guidance under a single model, with a dedicated local lead who knows the business and the environment.
It comes in three packages – Respond, Managed and Protect – designed to match different stages of the journey. Each includes a dedicated Unify lead who provides both day-to-day support and the strategic guidance that most mid-market organisations are missing.
