Telco Spark New Zealand has expanded its partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to include the use of HPE's GreenLake cloud-to-Edge offering.
Spark will be moving to a "variable model" for IT infrastructure by using the HPE GreenLake Cloud, a solution that sees HPE hardware deployed at a customer's data center, bringing its cloud to the Edge.
Spark's customer director for enterprise and government, Mark Beder, said: “This partnership will contribute to reducing annualised IT costs and ensure Spark’s IT environments are continuously updated in line with advancements in technology, including HPE’s leading automation and AI capabilities.
“We will also implement HPE GreenLake hybrid cloud management capabilities from Morpheus, which accelerates workload provisioning – providing a more user-friendly operational experience between public and private cloud environments for Spark and our customers.”
Spark will retain decision-making and control over its IT environments.
The telco is undergoing a program to improve the cost efficiencies of its technology delivery model, dubbed the SPK-26 Operate Programme. This involves embedding AI and automation into its offerings, and the company aims to achieve an NZ$80-100 million (US$45.6-57m) reduction in labor and opex costs this fiscal year, increasing to NZ$110-140m (US$62.7-79.8m) by fiscal year 2027.
The company did not share which data centers will see the GreenLake platform deployed. DCD has reached out for more information.
In April 2024, Spark announced plans to invest NZ$15 million ($9m) into digital infrastructure in Waikato, New Zealand, and took over the University of Waikato's data center. In February 2024 Spark announced that it was planning a new 10MW data center in Auckland's North Shore. The company also completed a 10MW expansion of its Takanini data center in August 2023.
During an October 2024 interview with w.media, Spark's customer and growth lead Matt Ryan said: "With Spark’s current 22MW of data centre capacity, our potential development pipeline now sitting at 118MW, and three strategic Auckland locations primed for investment, we are well positioned to capture a significant share of this growth."
Spark's Annual Report for 2024 reaffirmed this, noting that it has 22.3MW of data center capacity, with a map showing three data center campuses around Auckland, and 10 "Metro and Edge" data centers.
