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New Zealand and Australia

2025 Cloud & Infrastructure Report

DATACOM'S SIXTH ANNUAL CLOUD REPORT

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Cloud computing has become a cornerstone of digital transformation across New Zealand and Australia. But has it delivered on its promise?

Datacom’s sixth annual cloud report, developed in partnership with Tech Research Asia, draws on insights from over 700 organisations across the region. It reveals a nuanced picture: cloud has delivered strong returns in agility, scalability and customer experience but many organisations are still grappling with complexity, skills gaps and return on investment challenges.

This year’s report explores the state of cloud adoption, infrastructure maturity and emerging trends like AI and containerisation – offering a clear view of where the wins are, and where work remains.

Cloud report card

Strong returns but work to be done

Only 50% of organisations in New Zealand and less than half in Australian say cloud has delivered the benefits they expected. A key reason for that lack of return is the ‘lift and shift’ approach, where legacy systems are moved with minimal modernisation. Datacom’s cloud team points to the benefits of cloud being limited if organisations fail to also rethink architecture and ways of working.

Many organisations aren’t seeing the expected cloud benefits due to ‘lift and shift’, where legacy systems are moved with minimal modernisation. To truly unlock the benefits, businesses need to partner with cloud experts to navigate skills gaps, integration complexity and evolving tech.

Peter Nelson

Managing Director, Datacom New Zealand

Where cloud has delivered most value

There are some key areas where cloud is delivering a positive return for organisations, including scalability and flexibility, security posture, agility, remote access and improved customer experiences and responsiveness.

Having adopted cloud, some have not modernised their architectures, workloads or ways of working to realise benefits and achieve ROI. Challenges include skills and complexity and not leveraging digital and AI to solve business priorities.

Mike Walls

Director Cloud, Datacom

Data sovereignty: A growing focus for organisations in New Zealand and Australia

Are you concerned about data sovereignty?

Data sovereignty was identified as a concern for 61% of organisations in New Zealand and 60% in Australia facing complex data privacy and security challenges in increasingly unpredictable global markets.

Are organisations keeping data processing in-country?

Organisations in New Zealand and Australia are showing a preference for keeping data local - with 68% of organisations in Australia and 61% in New Zealand opting for in-country data processing. Keeping data and processing within national borders helps mitigate risks and maintains privacy and security laws.

Cloud computing has clearly delivered agility, innovation and operational gains, but the real opportunity lies in addressing the gaps. By focusing on visibility, optimisation and capability uplift, organisations can unlock far greater value with less effort.

Mark Hile

Managing Director Infrastructure Products, Datacom

Emerging trends: adoption of containerisation is strong

Adoption of containerisation is growing fast with 40% of organisations in New Zealand and 43% in Australia either currently using it or expecting to adopt in the next 24 months.

By allowing multiple applications to run on the same physical or virtual machine, containerisation reduces overheads and creates a foundation for portability, scalability and automation. Ultimately this gives teams the flexibility to deploy across platforms, integrate with modern developer tooling and accelerate innovation at scale.

We’re seeing a shift in organisations’ perceptions of their cloud maturity. The rapid pace of change in cloud platforms and services means leaders are recognising what they don’t yet know which is a positive step.

Mike Walls

Director Cloud, Datacom

Methodology

Datacom commissioned Tech Research Asia (TRA) to undertake research into cloud computing and infrastructure, and related technologies and trends in Australia and New Zealand in 2025, and projections for the next 12 months. This report draws on primary research from 504 organisations in Australia and 209 organisations in New Zealand. The 2025 report is Datacom’s sixth annual cloud report, making this one of the largest longitudinal studies of cloud adoption in Australasia.