Atturra-owned MSP Plan B is rebranding to more closely align with its parent company, marking the first step in its positioning as a new competitor for enterprise customers in New Zealand.
Former chief executive and director of Plan B, Frazer Scott, will take over as Atturra’s NZ country lead as Plan B changes its name to Atturra as of today.
Atturra acquired Plan B in late-2024 through its subsidiary Cirrus Networks Holdings for under AUD$20 million up front, plus $4m based on performance targets.
The mid-market-focused MSP specialised in telecommunications and network services, with more than 1,000 clients and five data centres across NZ.
Atturra now has five business divisions operational in New Zealand, including managed services, cloud services, business applications, data and integration, advisory and consulting divisions.
Expanded offerings for NZ market
The rebrand also comes with expanded offerings for the NZ market, including end user support, advanced cybersecurity, public cloud services, and streamlined procurement.
These will provide enhanced 'modern workplace/helpdesk' services, including desktop support, helpdesk, and workplace technology solutions, as well as the ability for Atturra to architect, deploy, and manage scalable cloud services for clients, backed by the cloud managed services team.
Scott talked up the expanded capabilities, as well as the broader services the new Australian parent company can offer, saying they position Atturra to challenge the large incumbent system integrators in NZ.
“If a client wants to talk to us about building an AI platform or replatforming their ERP services, Atturra broadly can have that conversation," he told techpartner.news.
"In the past, we never could. We were very wrapped [up] in the bubble of our capability and strength.
“That excites me because outside of a couple of tier one enterprise MSPs and systems integrators, no one can do that in NZ. If you want that level of capability, your choices are very limited.”
The plan for the time being, however, is to build on the existing mid-market relationships the Plan B team built over the years.
“We have clients who are primarily network clients, so they are buying network managed services from us, but we have an opportunity there to expand into security, into cloud, into end user support," Scott said.
"The capability of the business to grow with the clients we already have a relationship with is huge.”
Scott said the company has also been working on offerings of their own, such as a GPU-as-a-service platform for customers in Australia and NZ looking for local AI cloud options.
'A single trans-Tasman economic and talent zone'
Although the NZ market has a small pool of potential enterprise or even mid-market customers, with 97% of NZ businesses having 20 or fewer staff, Atturra chief executive Stephen Kowal takes a holistic view of Australia and New Zealand as “a single trans-Tasman economic and talent zone”.
“The two countries are culturally aligned, operate in similar time zones, and share high standards in education and professional capability," he told techpartner.news.
"This enables Atturra to leverage the combined talent pool as a unified capability base supporting clients across both countries.”
He added that New Zealand’s technology sector is well-established and experiencing solid growth, “making it a strategic and scalable investment opportunity”.
NZ leadership team to grow by three
Scott said that the move to join Atturra, both through the sale of Plan B and in the role of country manager, was spurred by the executives’ focus on people in his earliest conversations.
“The numbers were the numbers and the products were the products, [but] all they wanted to do is talk about the leadership team and the broader people and culture and what it meant for people to work there," he said.
“That immediately had me hooked because, at the end of the day, we're here to do great things for our clients, but you can only do that through the people that you work with every day.”
That leadership team is growing in New Zealand not just via Scott's appointment, but also drawing from other Plan B talent.
Diego Nievas has been appointed CTO to lead technical strategy and innovation for managed services across Australia and New Zealand, while Sachin Jain is taking on the role of director of customer experience and will oversee managed services delivery and client success.
Rudi Hefer has also been named as director of commercial and connect, heading the ANZ networking and connectivity business in addition to his commercial and channel responsibilities.
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