Wellington data centre provider Revera appears to have scored a coup after being selected by Microsoft to supply cloud-based software to government agencies and large corporations.

The service is designed to appeal to large organisations such as government departments which want to take advantage of cloud computing but may not want their data to be sent or stored overseas.

Revera general manager Robin Cockayne said the "Homeland Collaboration" would provide a "sovereign safe" cloud computing service that would initially be hosted at its data centres in Albany, north Auckland, and in Trentham, Upper Hutt.

The company will officially open the Trentham data centre, in which it is investing $40 million, on Friday.

Revera, Datacom and IBM were selected as data centre providers to the government under "whole-of-government" contracts let by Internal Affairs last year.

Gen-i, which missed out, struck a separate trans-Tasman deal to supply Microsoft software online earlier this month in conjunction with India's Infosys.

Scott Green, Auckland manager of larger rival Datacom, said it also provided cloud-based Microsoft software but did not feel compelled to partner with Microsoft in "this particular programme".

Referring to Microsoft's arrangements with Datacom, Revera and Gen-i, he said there were "small and in some cases subtle differences between all of these initiatives".

Cockayne said Revera's deal was for the provision of "enterprise-worthy" cloud services and could put it in a position to compete for new whole-of-government contracts for the supply of cloud-based desktop productivity software.

Although its three-year agreement with Microsoft was not exclusive, Microsoft had picked only 10 partners for the service, worldwide, to date. He expected that number to climb slowly to 18 partners covering 30 countries in two years.

Revera was formed by the management buyout of Japan's Hitachi Data Systems in 2003.

- © Fairfax NZ News