We spent this past week meeting with CxOs and IT leaders in the country of New Zealand. As a country, New Zealanders are considered on the forefront of using technology, and are a good indicator of what technologies will be taking the lead in the industry in the near future.  It also doesn’t hurt that the country is beautiful and the people are wonderful.

In every meeting, the key issues that came up were cloud services, desktop virtualisation and unified communications.  The conversation on cloud services was focused on the management of the plethora of services that are arising every day, and how to create the most frictionless, integrated portfolio of services in an aggregated fashion. Many of the folks are expecting  the distributor to play the key role in the distribution of cloud services. And work in partnership with the resellers, service providers and systems integrators that focus on meeting customer needs. Specifically, the role of Westcon is to provide services for our customers and not to compete with them to meet the needs of the end-user/enterprise.

In the area of desktop virtualisation, New Zealand has real examples of real projects underway. These projects have tangible, measurable, common-sense ROI that shows how the technology is being used to help the end-user enterprise reduce costs and provision desktops more efficiently. These are not pilots, nor are they technology projects for technology’s sake. They are desktop projects that meet the needs of the enterprise using the right technical approach.

In the area of unified communications, there are similar challenges with regards to getting the most out of the technology investments that have been made, and how video can play a larger role in the UC eco-system. Not the larger telepresence-like systems, but the smaller desktop, point-to-point solutions.

New Zealand is clearly a country that leverages technology advances to the betterment of its enterprises. And, in many examples, New Zealand is taking a lead role in how these technologies are being used. We look forward to seeing more of what comes from this country that can be used as leading examples around the world.

Bill CorbanCTO of Westcon