Our First Tertiary ICT Conference: Listening, Learning and Building Relationships in the Tertiary Sector

This September, Inde was involved in the Tertiary ICT Conference (TICT) in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. Despite our longstanding partnerships with providers in the sector, it was the first time we attended and sponsored the event.

This is a sector that as an organisation we have an affinity with. Tertiary institutions operate some of the most complex technology environments in New Zealand and it's this complexity that makes the sector so interesting to us. We enjoy working with organisations tackling difficult technology challenges at scale and finding practical ways to navigate competing priorities. The more we work alongside tertiary institutions, the more we appreciate both the challenge of their environments and the expertise of the people who keep them running.

A chance to listen to the challenges facing the sector

Bringing together more than 350 people from New Zealand's tertiary ICT community, the conference gave us an opportunity to take the natural next step to align with, listen to, learn from and build relationships with the people working through these challenges every day.

We were proud to sponsor the Welcome Function where the Mihi Whakatau set a warm and grounded tone for the days that followed. The conference was a chance to reconnect with existing customers and familiar faces from across the sector, as well as meet ICT leaders from institutions around the country. It was clear from listening to attendees, speakers and those who stopped by the booth, that tertiary institutions have multifaceted challenges. They must balance infrastructure, cloud, security, data and user experience across large and diverse communities, often while working within tight funding constraints and managing significant seasonal peaks and troughs in demand. Few industries experience the same cycle of intense support requirements that tertiary institutions do.

Photo: The Inde team at TICT

A common enjoyment of tackling complex problems

One of the highlights was having a little fun with participants over the Inde Rubik's (inspired) Cube challenge. It sparked genuinely great conversations and reflected something we noticed we have in common with IT professionals in the sector - a real enjoyment of tackling complex problems.

We also had the opportunity to take the stage ourselves. Our own Naveed Khan, Technical Director, Cloud and Modernisation and Dan Blake, Product Manager - Platforms, Security and Identity, from Te Wānanga o Aotearoa shared insights from a recent project completed collaboratively by our two organisations to migrate from VMWare as their core virtualisation platform to an Azure local HCI environment. Te Wānanga o Aotearoa were facing increasing costs, ageing hardware and datacentre opportunities and worked with Inde to undergo a significant infrastructure uplift to support their evolving digital delivery, security posture, and hybrid cloud strategy. It was a great interactive session and we valued the input from all who attended.

For us, TICT was about listening, learning and building relationships with a community tackling some of the most interesting technology challenges in New Zealand. The event was welcoming and engaging and didn’t shy away from discussing the challenges facing the education sector, which is why we are already looking forward to TICT27 in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland next year.

Inde Technology is a New Zealand-based, employee-owned IT consultancy delivering cloud-first enterprise solutions across Australia and New Zealand. Inde works closely with the tertiary education sector to help institutions address complex challenges across infrastructure, cloud, security, data and user experience.