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Umbrellar Technology Group

Squeeze more value from your cloud ☁️

We architect, build, manage, optimise, and secure New Zealand's leading cloud environments.

01/06/2026

Our newest team member needs almost no introduction! If you've worked anywhere near the Microsoft ecosystem in New Zealand, you'll already know Paul Quirk.

Today we're very pleased to share that Paul has joined Umbrellar as a Business Development Manager, Azure.

Paul joined Microsoft back in 2008, and spent the last nine years deep in the Azure platform working with everyone from modest local businesses through to the country's largest enterprises. He has a real gift for taking complex Azure concepts and translating them into business-focused ideas that the whole room can understand.

What drew him to Umbrellar was our engineering capability and our long-standing focus on customer relationships. In his words, "they're very customer first, business outcome focused." That's a description we'll happily wear.

Paul is a self-described "boxes and lines" guy who loves the architectural side of things and gets a lot of fulfilment from helping people solve hard problems. He's exactly the kind of senior Azure brain we want in front of our customers.

Welcome to the team, Quirky. We're stoked to have you!

25/05/2026

All at once, or piece by piece? It's one of the first questions any cloud migration project has to answer, and the right call depends entirely on your context.

A big bang migration moves all systems at once. It's faster, gets you to the end state sooner, and works well for smaller organisations or tightly coupled environments where separating workloads would introduce more risk than moving them together. The trade-off is that it concentrates risk into a single window where a problem in one area can affect the whole business at the same time.

A phased migration moves workloads in waves, typically organised by department, region, or application group. The pace is slower and the risk is distributed, and each wave produces lessons you can apply to the next. For larger organisations or complex environments with mission-critical workloads, phased is usually the smarter call.

Either way, the sequencing matters, and it starts with dependency mapping. Understanding how your systems connect to each other is what determines whether workloads can be separated into waves or need to move together.
From there, workloads should be prioritised in a deliberate order:

- Start with lower-risk, less complex workloads - things your business can tolerate a hiccup on - to prove the migration process and refine your approach before the stakes get higher.
- Then move to high-value, lower-risk applications that deliver visible ROI and validate the approach with meaningful business outcomes.
- Then tackle the complex, mission-critical systems with a proven playbook, refined processes, and lessons from earlier waves.

Throughout, compliance requirements may force specific systems to wait until certain controls are in place, and every wave needs a tested rollback plan before cutover.

The full guide walks through how we sequence migrations for our customers. Read our Cloud Migration Playbook here: https://loom.ly/zx7_vaI

13/05/2026

For an institutional private equity firm, cloud migration comes down to one thing: certainty.

Here's how Umbrellar partnered with Mobile Mentor to modernise GenNx360's core systems in Azure, retiring 100% of legacy infrastructure and delivering a foundation built for confidence.

For institutional firms, cloud success looks like certainty. Read the full case study here 👉 https://loom.ly/mMUybGE

12/05/2026

Cloud modernisation isn't optional anymore - it's URGENT.

Our Umbrellar Professional Services help you:
→ Move with a plan (not guesswork)
→ Modernise, not just migrate
→ Build for what’s next, not just what’s now

If you want less risk, better performance and faster outcomes, talk to us.

Get a Cloud Readiness Assessment now 👉 https://loom.ly/yIXTCPY

29/04/2026

Most cloud providers are brilliant at delivering the project. Then they go quiet.

We think cloud partnership should feel closer to a long relationship than a transaction. You know your account lead. Your engineers know your environment. Someone's actively looking at your setup, flagging risks before they bite, and checking in when your priorities shift.

If your current provider disappears between tickets, we'd love to show you how it should feel. Request a proactive support review: umbrellar.co.nz/experience-partnership

28/04/2026

Legacy systems can slow releases down, chew into your security posture, and quietly drain budget that could be funding the next phase of growth.

For a lot of NZ organisations, the tricky part is finding a way to modernise without disrupting what's already working, and without blowing the budget in the process.

Most teams already know the tech needs to move on but they're missing that practical path through.

That's where we come in. We work alongside your team to untangle what's there, figure out what to keep, what to replace, and what to retire, and build a cloud environment that supports where the business is actually heading.

Good modernisation work tends to happen in confident steps. With the right plan in place, you end up with a setup that's more secure, more flexible, and more cost-effective, without grinding day-to-day operations to a halt.

If you're carrying technical debt that's starting to get in the way, we'd love to have a conversation about what your modernisation journey could look like!

Get in touch with our team: https://www.umbrellar.co.nz/

27/04/2026

"Yesterday's Microsoft AI Tour was a great reminder that we're well beyond the hype phase. I was incredibly proud to see our customer Anna Campbell from Whakarongorau on stage, showcasing how AI is already being used to save lives in a very real, very human way."

- Ian Hassell

For New Zealand, AI has quietly moved out of the pilot stage and into the everyday. It's on stage at our biggest tech events because it's already working inside some of the organisations doing the most important work in the country.

Whakarongorau's team are a brilliant example. When you're answering a call from someone in crisis, the phrase "ready to use" carries real weight.

23/04/2026

"AI is mature, not experimental."

That's the takeaway Gareth brought back from this week's Microsoft AI Tour in Auckland and it's a shift every NZ business leader should be paying attention to.

"Walking away from the Microsoft AI Tour Auckland, the message was clear. Microsoft has done the hard yards to make AI practical for New Zealand businesses. It is secure by default, scalable, and ready to use. The platform is mature, not experimental."

For a while, AI has felt like something Kiwi businesses were watching from the sidelines. Waiting for it to settle, and waiting for it to prove it could be trusted with real data and real customers.

That wait is over.

The question is no longer 'does AI belongs in your business?', but now asking how you roll it out safely and in a way that amplifies your business.

01/04/2026

Meet Tom Wood, Umbrellar's BDM who helps businesses figure out what they *actually* need from their cloud, not just what they think they need...

He's been with the team since September 2025. Long enough to know where things live, who to call, and which meetings could have been emails!

When asked how he'd explain his job to a 10-year-old, Tom put it simply: "I help companies keep their computers and internet working properly so they don't get grumpy. And when things break, I help them fix it before anyone starts yelling."

Which honestly? Covers most of it.

A big part of his day-to-day is translating cloud buzzwords back into plain English, and reminding people that "just moving it to the cloud" is not, in fact, a strategy.

His biggest bugbear? The assumption that cloud is automatically cheaper. "It's like buying a gym membership - great value if you use it properly, very expensive if you don't."

The worst IT advice he's ever heard: "It'll be fine, we don't need backups."
The best: "If it's critical, assume it will fail — and plan accordingly."

Off the clock, Tom's passionate about anything that gets him offline for a bit: travel, good food, and time with people who aren't trying to talk about cloud architecture.

We're glad to have him in our corner!

30/03/2026

Cloud environments don’t fail all at once... They degrade quietly:

A missed alert.
An unpatched risk.
A cost that keeps creeping up.

Until suddenly, you’re firefighting again.

Umbrellar Proactive Care changes that, with:
→ 24/7 local support that actually stays ahead
→ Proactive monitoring and optimisation
→ Built-in security, resilience, and recovery

So your team can stop reacting, and start leading.

If your environment feels like it’s getting harder to manage, it probably is!

Talk to us, we'll help you get ahead of it 👉 https://loom.ly/o3FwEss

Address

Level 6, 10 Viaduct Harbour
Auckland
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Website

https://www.umbrellar.co.nz/

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