Microsoft signs Fonterra as first major anchor tenant for new data centre

Thursday, 30 July 2020

Dairy giant Fonterra is the first major company to sign up to be part of Microsoft’s proposed New Zealand-based data centre.

In May, Microsoft announced it planned to build a data centre in the North Island, adding to its 59 other data centres around the globe.

It will be the first multinational cloud service to open one in New Zealand, with the investment likely worth tens of millions of dollars.

Vanessa Sorenson, managing director of Microsoft New Zealand, said the faster pace of innovation, greater sustainability and cost savings enabled by cloud technologies were a small part of the benefits expected from the digital investment.

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“Watch this space. This is the first customer signing of many,” Sorenson said.

“When we disclosed the launch of the New Zealand data centre region, we knew there would be an appetite for the scope and solutions that it would provide to unlock innovation across so many industries.”

Sorenson said the partnership with Fonterra would serve as a demonstration on the benefits of cloud technology for New Zealand’s entire agrifood network.

The partnership and technological investment would increase the amount of data Fonterra could gather and analyse in real time, using everything from sensors on farm milk vats to smart machines in its factories to help optimise its operations, Fonterra’s chief information officer Piers Shore said.

“The new platform aims to bring together all parts of Fonterra and build a culture around data,” Shore said.

“By capturing and integrating data across the organisation, this will create a foundation for actionable insight and enable Fonterra to deepen our relationships with farmers and customers, optimise our supply chain and manufacturing operations and deliver better products and services.”

Fonterra was already trialling machine learning to detect improperly sealed or faulty bags of powdered milk in its factories, to reduce wastage, he said.

Ahead of the opening of the data centre, the dairy co-operative will migrate critical parts of its operations to Microsoft’s cloud service, Azure.

Under the agreement, Microsoft Surface devices will also be provided to key Fonterra staff across Australia and New Zealand to support business across its network of 19,000 staff and 10,000 farmers.

No date was given for the opening of the data centre.