Reseller News NZ

Within the next 12 months, distributor Crayon Channel APAC (formerly rhipe), a SoftwareOne Company, plans to triple its local business through significant investments. The distributor sees the country as one of its top three priorities, with significant opportunities and impressive partner innovation. “We’re making significant investments into the New Zealand market,” explained Crayon A/NZ general manager of channel Mathew Howard. “We already have our channel business there, and we also have Parallo, a managed services organisation based in New Zealand under the Crayon banner. We see major opportunity in that market.” https://lnkd.in/gjSjisWN

Best wishes to Danni Munro, former Pax8 A/NZ vice president of sales, in her new role as A/NZ director of channel sales at Guardz. The vendor is aimed at the #SMB market and will be useful for #MSPs who are navigating evolving customer demands in #cybersecurity. “MSPs are under increasing pressure to deliver stronger security outcomes while also managing operational complexity, customer expectations, and rapidly evolving threats,” Munro said. Guardz brought Danni Munro on board due to her experience with A/NZ MSPs. "SMBs are facing growing threats but often lack the resources and operational capacity to manage them alone,” said Guardz CEO and co-founder Dor Eisner. “Danni brings deep channel experience, strong MSP community relationships, and a proven track record of helping partners scale through periods of industry transformation." https://lnkd.in/gi2Mz9Uh

All the best to Ashley McGibbon she steps into the role of senior director of sales enterprise business at ServiceNow. Her new position will see her driving growth, building a high-performing team, and making sure ServiceNow’s enterprise customers are unlocking real value from our AI platform, which sounds “simple to say, but hard to do”, according to ServiceNow group vice president Australia and New Zealand Pete Andrew. https://lnkd.in/gmjCAvMu

Spending on AI around the world is predicted to reach US$2.59 trillion by the end of 2026, representing a rise of 47 per cent year-on-year. https://lnkd.in/gxzqxmqZ This is according to Gartner, which said most of the expenditure is predicted to be on AI infrastructure, jumping up from US$975.6 billion last year to US$1.4 trillion in 2026. “Through the next several years, the need for capacity will make AI infrastructure, including AI-optimised IaaS, AI-optimised servers, AI network fabric, AI processing semiconductors and devices, the largest segment of the market, accounting for over 45 per cent of spending, which will be driven by vendors,” said Gartner distinguished VP analyst John Lovelock.

MSI has broadened its presence across A/NZ through a distribution agreement with Bluechip Infotech New Zealand Limited. https://lnkd.in/gzh9Akn5 The agreement covers a range of MSI’s products, including business and commercial laptops; professional monitors; all-in-one, mini PCs, and desktop systems; edge AI PCs; AI servers; and rugged tablets. The distributor’s director of marketing and alliances, Willy H., said MSI’s portfolio enables its channel partners to address a variety of customer requirements across AI PCs, commercial devices, and server solutions. Meanwhile, the vendor's Australia general manager, Jerry Lu, added MSI partnering with Bluechip “represents a major step forward in strengthening MSI’s channel ecosystem in Australia and New Zealand”.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) New Zealand is positioning #AI as a practical engine for global‑scale innovation, automation, and faster decision-making, enabling local firms to compete at the speed and sophistication of much larger international players. During the AWS Sydney Summit 2026, its country manager New Zealand, Manuel Bohnet, highlighted how it has exceeded its goal of training 100,000 Kiwis in AI and cloud technologies within five years. This was just one of a broader set of goals outlined during a roundtable with customers One New Zealand's breakthrough opportunity in working with AWS came via the use of large language models (LLMs). To understand call quality and step back to see where its products weren’t serving customers well and what it could do to resolve that, explained One NZ chief AI and data director Summer Collins. For New Zealand Rugby's Jonathan Southee explained at the roundtable that customers can't be neglected. “You can’t build amazing, technically brilliant things and then forget about who you’re delivering it for.” While ZURU Toys are serving customers by using AI on social media content to create cultural insights. “This year already, we’ve been able to ingest two and a half million TikTok videos into our data systems and use AI to go through that and tell us what the insight is," said Brittany Oliver. "That’s really important, because that’s essentially what underpins all our product decisions and all of our content decisions.” #cloudcomputing #AWS #AI https://lnkd.in/gn7cHpaw

Ingram Micro has been appointed as a distributor for Hisense Commercial Display in New Zealand. https://lnkd.in/gvjNSaHS The agreement covers a variety of product categories, including commercial displays for retail and offices; digital signage for 24/7 operation; video wall systems; high-brightness indoor and outdoor displays, all-in-one LED solutions for large-scale viewing; and interactive displays for collaboration in education and workplaces. Ingram Micro business manager for unified communications, collaboration, and professional audio-visual Luke Mitchell said Hisense was a “strong addition to our professional audio-visual portfolio”. Meanwhile, Hisense Asia Pacific senior regional manager for Australia and New Zealand Manuel Molina said the partnership is a step forward in the vendor bolstering its presence in the region.

Tower Insurance has utilised Amazon Connect in its contact centre to cut down the time customers interact with the business by approximately 15 per cent. https://lnkd.in/dx6Aft5Z Following a pilot period with Deloitte New Zealand, the pair worked together to implement the Amazon Web Services (AWS)-powered solution to free up time for its employees and provides them with real-time insights, automated quality monitoring, and AI-assisted agent support. As a result, the insurer stated that over 796,000 minutes in call time has been saved over the seven months since the solution was implemented, which translates to more than 550 days of customer time, according to its CEO, Paul Johnston. “We see Tower as a genuine leader in digital transformation,” said Deloitte New Zealand partner Kylie Bryant. “Their commitment to innovation and customer‑centricity is setting a new benchmark in the insurance industry and beyond.”

Spark New Zealand and Ericsson Enterprise Wireless Solutions have worked together to help Port Nelson Limited overcome inconsistent Wi-Fi in its warehouses through a private 5G network. https://lnkd.in/dP8VC3E6 The 5G+ Private Network Solution from Spark covers 30,000 square metres over three warehouses in Nelson and Blenheim, utilising Ericsson Private 5G to establish a high-availability core at Port Nelson that connects to small cell radios to boost coverage. “Connectivity was becoming a real operational constraint for us,” said Port Nelson general manager of business transformation Reagan Pattison. “No matter how much we tried to saturate our warehouses with Wi‑Fi, we couldn’t get consistent performance. That impacted productivity, created frustration for our operators, and limited our ability to modernise how we work.”

From chips to tokens: Dell, Nvidia reshape enterprise compute for agentic AI https://lnkd.in/gS9KKu6y #ResellerNews Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell has declared artificial intelligence has crossed a critical threshold, becoming core infrastructure for enterprises, as the company deepens its partnership with Nvidia to deliver large‑scale “AI factories” and agent-driven computing.