Tailscale signs Oceania-wide exclusive distribution deal with HAT

HAT Distribution is the new exclusive distribution partner across Oceania for Tailscale, a move intended to expand Tailscale’s secure connectivity platform to partners and customers across Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.

HAT will support partners with local technical enablement, aiming to help accelerate adoption.

Built on a peer-to-peer mesh model, Tailscale enables direct, encrypted connections between systems. Tailscale’s broader platform also spans privileged access and AI governance.

Josh Gammer, director at HAT Distribution, said the partnership reflects a shift in how organisations are securing and connecting modern infrastructure.

“Organisations are looking for simpler ways to securely connect users, devices, and distributed systems across cloud and hybrid environments,” said Gammer.

“Tailscale delivers that with a much cleaner approach – one that’s built around identity, not network boundaries. As Tailscale expands into privileged access and AI governance, partners have a practical way to help customers modernise secure access and infrastructure controls on a shared foundation of identity, policy, and connectivity. It opens the door for new managed services and gives customers a faster path to modernising their environments.”

Tailscale’s chief executive and co-founder, Avery Pennarun, said legacy VPNs mostly don’t survive contact with modern, distributed environments.

“Tailscale takes a different approach: make networking simple, reliable, and invisible to the user,” said Pennarun.

“HAT has a solid track record of building services around platforms that work this way, which puts us in a good position to help partners across Oceania move off legacy models and onto something much better.”

In March of this year, HAT Distribution was appointed as an ANZ distributor for Tufin, a company specialising in network security posture management.