New Zealand’s Sovereign Cloud: What it means for security and innovation
Data is so important to the modern world, fuelling economies, societies, and daily lives. With the unprecedented amount of data generated today, the question of ownership and control has become crucial. This issue affects businesses, governments, and individuals, making data sovereignty (whereby data is hosted locally) a pressing global topic.
In response, governments are increasingly advocating for "Sovereign Clouds" – onshore hosting of cloud services that are locally owned, predominantly managed by the local provider, and compliant with applicable privacy and security laws.
This approach preserves sovereignty in terms of local hosting of citizen and government data while providing local organisations with the cloud capabilities necessary for modernisation. Additionally, ensuring local hosting of data helps to lay the foundations for sovereign AI capabilities, ensuring models are trained on indigenous data without multiple layers of privacy laws complicating matters.
New Zealand recently welcomed the launch of its first onshore hyperscale cloud, TEAM Cloud, by Oracle partner TEAM IM, which offers more than 100 Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) services. Deployed in nine months, TEAM Cloud offers New Zealand organisations the security and scalability of the public cloud while enabling local hosting of data. Built on Oracle Alloy, TEAM Cloud allows local organisations to run Oracle infrastructure within data centres that are entirely locally owned and operated. REACH Media, a New Zealand media agency, is one of the first local businesses to adopt TEAM Cloud.
Establishing a National Foundation for Innovation
Data sovereignty ensures all data hosted in New Zealand stays hosted in the country, governed by applicable laws.
Concerns around sovereign data are echoed globally among countries like the US, UK, and those in the EU where Oracle has built sovereign cloud regions. Sovereign clouds provide an option to assist with requirements for locally hosted data. For instance, scalable cloud computing power benefits innovations like sovereign AI, as discussed at the World Economic Forum (WEF).
The global imperative for nations to invest in sovereign AI capabilities has grown with the rise of generative AI, reshaping markets. According to the WEF, AI should learn from data collected across key areas of organisations and government agencies to inform strategic decisions in finance, cybersecurity, and technology. Developing sovereign AI would also help decouple New Zealand from dependency on foreign AI technologies and data services. By building these capabilities domestically, New Zealand can and build resilience against local supply chain disruptions.
There are also other benefits for public organisations implementing the New Zealand government's Cloud First policy and hosting data locally as onshore data centres enable lower latencies, further accelerating innovation. Ensuring data controllers and processors comply with New Zealand privacy laws builds trust in the public sector's ability to manage and protect citizens' data in accordance with applicable laws.
Sovereignty Begins with a Sovereign Cloud
With TEAM Cloud, New Zealand's cloud capabilities will expand to meet rising public sector demand. Organisations have access to over 100 OCI services, also available in Oracle's public clouds and built for the Australian public sector.
TEAM Cloud helps meet the country's need for data sovereignty (locally hosted data), enabling public agencies to leverage OCI's scalability while ensuring hosted data remains hosted in a locally-owned data centre.
Leveraging the power of Oracle's OCI services alongside new data sovereignty capabilities, TEAM Cloud customers can now utilise data in heavier workloads and applications, like analytics and AI. With this major step in New Zealand's sovereign capabilities, local organisations can now propel innovation and, while the public sector can transform itself into drivers of technological change and national progress.
