36 Best Cloud Computing Thought Leaders ANZ 2026

Last updated: June 2026

Cloud computing in Australia and New Zealand has passed the tipping point. It is no longer a question of whether organisations should move to the cloud. The question every CIO, CDO, and board director is now wrestling with is who to listen to about how to use the cloud well, how to use it securely, how to use it in ways that comply with Australian and New Zealand data sovereignty requirements, and how to avoid paying for more than necessary.

As of June 2026, Amazon Web Services has invested $18.9 billion into cloud and AI infrastructure in Australia since 2012 and an additional $7.5 billion in New Zealand. Microsoft launched the country's first hyperscale datacentre region in New Zealand in December 2024, and Google Cloud has committed to Pacific connectivity infrastructure through the Honomoana and Tabua subsea cables. The scale of infrastructure investment reflects that ANZ cloud adoption is accelerating, but the Spark NZ State of Cloud 2025 report captures a harder truth: while 70 percent of New Zealand businesses say cloud is critical to their future, only 34 percent have well-established cloud foundations.

Book Jonno White to help your leadership team navigate the people side of technology transformation. As a Certified Working Genius Facilitator and author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold globally), Jonno works with organisations across Australia and New Zealand to build the communication, decision-making, and accountability cultures that make digital strategy actually land. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Why Cloud Leadership Matters in the ANZ Context Right Now

Cloud computing thought leadership matters here because ANZ is not simply a miniature version of the United States cloud market. The most significant cloud questions in this region have a distinctly local character. Sovereign cloud is not an abstract regulatory concern: it is an active procurement reality for Australian government agencies operating under the Protective Security Policy Framework, and for New Zealand organisations navigating the government's cloud-first strategy under the Government Chief Digital Officer.

FinOps, the discipline of managing cloud costs deliberately, has become a boardroom conversation as organisations running on four or five cloud providers discover that the pay-as-you-go model without disciplined governance produces spending that exceeds forecasts. According to the FinOps Foundation's 2026 State of FinOps report, teams that reach mature FinOps practices achieve cloud cost reductions of 20 to 30 percent without degrading performance. For ANZ organisations, the economic stakes of getting this right are significant. The leaders on this list are the people thinking most clearly about all of it.

Organisations that want help building the cultural and team capability to make the most of their cloud and technology investment can engage Jonno White, author of Step Up or Step Out and Certified Working Genius Facilitator, at jonno@consultclarity.org.

How This List Was Compiled

Every person on this list has either led ANZ operations for a major cloud platform, contributed peer-reviewed research to cloud computing from an Australian or New Zealand institution, built a cloud services business of demonstrable scale, shaped public policy on government cloud and data sovereignty in the region, or developed original public thinking on cloud strategy that ANZ technology leaders actively engage with. LinkedIn activity in 2025 and 2026 was assessed for each candidate. People whose LinkedIn profiles showed no original content in the last 60 days, or who had no independent corroboration of their credentials beyond a conference speaker page, were not included.

Hyperscaler Leaders Driving the ANZ Cloud Agenda

The hyperscalers, AWS, Microsoft, and Google Cloud, are not just cloud providers in Australia and New Zealand. They are infrastructure investors, skills trainers, government partners, and the organisations whose strategic decisions shape what cloud computing is and costs for every organisation in the region. The people leading their ANZ operations are among the most consequential cloud voices in both countries. Each of these leaders was selected not just because of their title, but because they are actively publishing thinking, making public commitments, and shaping the ANZ conversation through speaking, writing, and policy engagement in 2025 and 2026.

1. Chris Casey

A veteran of Amazon Web Services since 2018, Casey was appointed Managing Director of AWS for Australia and New Zealand in May 2026, succeeding Rianne van Veldhuizen at what AWS described as its most consequential moment in the region. He previously served as Director of AWS Partnerships for Asia Pacific and Japan, where he helped grow one of the strongest partner ecosystems in the region.

Casey announced his appointment publicly on the keynote stage at AWS Summit Sydney 2026, telling partners and customers that he remained relentless about tomorrow. His contribution to the ANZ cloud conversation is practical and ecosystem-focused: he is the person responsible for how AWS's expanding infrastructure investment in Australia and New Zealand, including the $18.9 billion committed since 2012, translates into outcomes for local customers and partners. He is active on LinkedIn and his posts combine strategic announcements with direct engagement with the partner community.

2. Rada Stanic

As Chief Technologist for AWS in Australia and New Zealand, Rada Stanic occupies a distinctive position at the intersection of technical depth and enterprise strategy. Based in Sydney, she works directly with AWS's largest enterprise and ISV customers to help them build modern data platforms and navigate the transition to generative AI.

Her 2025 commentary on the shift from AI pilots and proof of concepts to production deployment captured a moment that resonated across the ANZ technology community. She was a keynote speaker at AWS Summit Sydney 2026 and has written and spoken widely on cloud resilience, data strategy, and the technical foundations enterprises need before AI can deliver value. Her ability to articulate cloud architecture decisions in language that resonates with executive decision-makers makes her one of the most practically useful cloud voices in the region.

3. Louise Stigwood

Louise Stigwood leads AWS's public sector business across Australia and New Zealand as Managing Director, a role she has built over nearly a decade at Amazon. Her work sits at the intersection of two of the most complex cloud adoption challenges in the region: regulated industries and government. She has been a visible advocate for cloud skills development, overseeing programs that have trained hundreds of thousands of Australians and New Zealanders in cloud and AI competencies.

Her thinking on what it takes to build a cloud-skilled workforce that reflects the full diversity of ANZ society has shaped how AWS engages with education institutions and government agencies across the region. In November 2025, she was described as "managing director of ANZ public sector at Amazon Web Services" in SmartCompany, reflecting her sustained leadership of the public sector cloud business. She posts actively on LinkedIn, particularly on the intersection of technology access, skills equity, and cloud adoption.

4. Jane Livesey

Jane Livesey became President of Microsoft Australia and New Zealand in November 2025, joining from Cognizant where she served as President of Asia Pacific and Japan. She inherited a Microsoft ANZ business at a pivotal moment: the company had just opened its first hyperscale datacentre region in New Zealand, committed to training three million Australians in AI skills by 2028, and announced a $25 billion investment in Australian AI infrastructure.

Her first months in the role were marked by decisive public engagement, with the Microsoft Global AI Tour stops in Sydney and Auckland in April 2026 anchored by her thought leadership on what AI adoption requires beyond technology. Her background spans PwC, Accenture, and IBM alongside Cognizant, giving her a consulting-side perspective on enterprise transformation that complements the vendor perspective she now occupies. She is active on LinkedIn and her posts engage directly with customers, partners, and policymakers on cloud-first strategy and AI-driven growth.

5. Paul Migliorini

Paul Migliorini joined Google Cloud as Vice President for Australia and New Zealand in October 2024, bringing an unusual depth of regional experience to the role. He previously served as Managing Director of AWS Australia and as CEO of Versent, the cloud services company acquired by Telstra, giving him direct practitioner experience on both the hyperscaler side and the consulting delivery side of cloud adoption.

Based in Sydney, he has used his first year at Google Cloud to drive enterprise AI adoption partnerships with organisations including Canva, Woolworths, Macquarie Bank, and the Department of Health and Aged Care. His commentary on the multicloud opportunity, specifically his October 2025 remarks on the launch of Oracle Database at Google Cloud in Australia, reflects a clear strategic thesis that the ANZ market is moving beyond single-cloud commitments. He is active on LinkedIn and his posts combine strategic announcements with direct engagement on the AI and cloud agenda.

6. Melanie Silva

Melanie Silva has served as Managing Director and VP of Google for Australia and New Zealand since 2018, after several years leading Google's Go to Market Strategy across APAC. She is a Board Director of the Business Council of Australia, a Sydney Opera House Trustee, and a member of Chief Executive Women, making her one of the most publicly engaged technology executives in the country.

Her contribution to the cloud conversation operates at the level of national digital policy and economic strategy: she has been a consistent and credible public voice on why Australia's competitive position in the AI era depends on cloud infrastructure investment, digital skills, and inclusive access to technology. Her dual role as Google's country leader and a prominent board director gives her a perspective that bridges the commercial and the civic in ways that purely technical voices cannot.

7. Tim Dacombe-Bird

Tim Dacombe-Bird was appointed Head of Google Cloud in New Zealand in June 2025, based in Wellington. He brings prior experience from Wiz, AWS, and VMware in New Zealand to a role that sits at the centre of the country's cloud transformation story. New Zealand has become a notable cloud adoption case study: Microsoft opened its first hyperscale datacentre region there in December 2024, Google signed an all-of-government Cloud Framework Agreement with New Zealand in 2023, and AWS has invested $7.5 billion in New Zealand infrastructure.

Dacombe-Bird's role is to translate that infrastructure commitment into actual business transformation for Kiwi organisations. His public commentary has consistently emphasised that New Zealand businesses are inherently innovative and ready for the next wave of digitisation, and his engagement with the NZ partner and customer community has been active and visible since his appointment.

8. Pip Gilbert

Pip Gilbert was appointed Head of Partner for AWS Australia and New Zealand in May 2026, having spent the previous five years inside AWS leading strategy and operations for the ANZ region. She was deeply involved in the partners everywhere strategy that made AWS's ANZ partner ecosystem one of the strongest in the world, and her appointment as partner lead reflects a recognition that the next phase of ANZ cloud growth will be predominantly partner-led.

Her first public comments after the appointment, delivered at the AWS Partner Summit Sydney 2026 opening keynote, laid out clear investment priorities in financial services, government, and mining, the three sectors where she identified the strongest enterprise demand for partner-led transformation. She is active on LinkedIn and her posts reflect a practical, partner-first perspective on cloud adoption.

9. Adam Beavis

Adam Beavis leads Databricks' business in Australia and New Zealand as VP and Country Manager, a role he took in August 2023 after eight years at AWS in various commercially focused roles. His background spans ISV and digital native businesses, enterprise sales, and data infrastructure, giving him a distinctive perspective on how the data lakehouse model is changing the relationship between cloud infrastructure and AI capability.

His commentary at Databricks' Data and AI World Tour events in Australia in 2025 captured the inflection point many ANZ enterprises were navigating: the shift from AI experimentation to production deployment, which he described as requiring a new level of data maturity rather than simply more compute. He was a member of the judging panel for the New Zealand CIO Innovation Summit and Awards in 2026. He is highly active on LinkedIn.

10. Caroline Rainsford

Caroline Rainsford is Country Director of Google in New Zealand, a role that spans Google's full commercial presence in the country including Google Cloud's growing ANZ footprint. She was directly involved in the appointment of Tim Dacombe-Bird as Head of Google Cloud New Zealand in mid-2025 and has been a consistent voice on why the talent, adaptability, and innovation culture of New Zealand businesses makes the country a distinctive cloud adoption environment.

Her public commentary often addresses how New Zealand organisations can leverage global cloud capabilities while maintaining the data sovereignty and local governance that New Zealand law and community expectations require. She is active on LinkedIn and engages across the breadth of Google's New Zealand presence including connectivity infrastructure, AI adoption, and public sector partnerships.

Academic and Research Leaders

Cloud computing research in Australia and New Zealand is not just foundational theory. Several of the world's most cited cloud computing researchers are based at Australian universities, and their work directly shapes how practitioners think about distributed systems, edge computing, quantum cloud, and cloud security. These are voices that belong on any serious cloud reading list.

11. Rajkumar Buyya

Rajkumar Buyya is a Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor and Director of the Quantum Cloud Computing and Distributed Systems Laboratory at the University of Melbourne. His academic contribution to cloud computing is foundational: his early work on economics-driven grid and cloud computing helped establish the market-oriented architecture that underpins how public cloud pricing and resource allocation work today. He has been cited more than 170,000 times and was elevated to IEEE Fellow in 2015 for contributions to cloud computing.

He became a Fellow of the ACM in the class of 2025 and received the APJ Abdul Kalam HPC and AI Award in 2026. His qCLOUDS Lab published 69 papers in 2025 and delivered over 47 invited talks at conferences in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, and beyond. For ANZ technology leaders who want to understand where cloud computing is heading, particularly at the intersection of quantum computing, edge computing, and AI infrastructure, Buyya's research and public commentary provide the most rigorous available foundation.

12. Joseph K. Liu

Joseph K. Liu is a Full Professor in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University, where he leads the Cybersecurity Discipline Group and serves as founding director of the Monash Blockchain Technology Centre. His research focus is cybersecurity in the cloud computing paradigm, with particular depth in applied cryptography, privacy-enhancing technologies, and cloud security architecture.

He received the Australian Computer Society's ICT Researcher of the Year award in 2018, and his research has produced results of direct practical significance for organisations managing sensitive data in cloud environments. He held a public industry master class at PolyU in Hong Kong in May 2026, reflecting ongoing international engagement. For ANZ CISOs and cloud architects navigating the security dimensions of cloud adoption, Liu's research provides both theoretical rigour and practical guidance.

13. Saurabh Garg

Saurabh Garg is a Senior Lecturer in Cyber Security and Systems at RMIT University's School of Computing Technologies in Melbourne. He was listed in the Stanford/Elsevier Top 2 Percent Scientists list for 2024, ranking 30th among 9,581 researchers globally in distributed computing. His research covers cloud computing, IoT-cloud integration, machine learning applied to cloud resource management, and green computing.

He has over 120 publications with more than 10,000 citations, has co-developed influential cloud simulation tools including NetworkCloudSim, and has completed postdoctoral research at IBM Research Australia. His work is notable for bridging the gap between theoretical advances in distributed systems and practical implementation challenges that practitioners face in real cloud environments. His presence at RMIT in Melbourne gives him consistent engagement with the Australian enterprise technology community.

14. Tony Jan

Tony Jan is a Professor and Head of Information Technology at Torrens University Australia, where he leads programs spanning AI, cloud computing, and cybersecurity. He received the University Academic Leadership Award in 2022 and the Research Excellence Award in 2023, and has published over 70 high-impact journal and conference articles. He serves as Director of the Artificial Intelligence Research Centre at Torrens, with research supported by multiple grants including ARC Discovery and large-scale industry-sponsored grants.

His background includes appointments at Melbourne Institute of Technology and the University of Technology Sydney. His contribution to the ANZ cloud thought leadership conversation is through research, education, and applied industry partnerships that translate academic cloud computing advances into practitioner capability. He is an active participant in the Australian AI and cloud research community.

Sovereign, Government and Enterprise Cloud

Australia and New Zealand have distinct sovereign cloud requirements that shape cloud adoption decisions in ways not always captured in global cloud commentary. The Essential Eight cybersecurity framework from the Australian Signals Directorate, the Protective Security Policy Framework for government data, and the New Zealand government's cloud-first strategy all create a regulatory and governance context that requires specialist expertise. The people in this category have built that expertise and are actively sharing it publicly.

15. Aidan Tudehope

Aidan Tudehope is Managing Director of Macquarie Government, part of the ASX-listed Macquarie Technology Group. Macquarie Government is one of a small number of organisations certified by the Australian Signals Directorate to handle PROTECTED, SECRET, and higher-classified data in the cloud, and it serves more than 42 percent of Australia's federal agencies. He has been one of the most consistent and credible public voices in Australia on the distinction between data residency and data sovereignty.

His argument, made repeatedly in public forums and media commentary, is that true data sovereignty requires not just that data stays in Australia, but that it is accessible only by Australian-based staff with appropriate security clearances and cannot be reached by foreign legal process. That position has shaped government cloud procurement policy in material ways. He received the 2026 Netskope APJ MSP of the Year award, reflecting Macquarie Government's continuing standing as Australia's leading sovereign cloud provider. He is active on LinkedIn.

16. David Tudehope

David Tudehope co-founded Macquarie Technology Group with his brother Aidan in 1992 and has served as its CEO since. What began as a challenger telecommunications business has become an ASX-listed group spanning cloud, data centres, cybersecurity, and managed services. His three-decade journey to leading an ASX250 company is a story of building with patience, purpose, and a consistent focus on the Australian market.

His LinkedIn thought leadership addresses the strategic and governance dimensions of technology investment, digital infrastructure, and the board-level decisions that determine whether technology generates value. The 2026 partnership with Netskope to deliver what Macquarie described as the largest SSE rollout for the Australian Government in history reflects the scale of what Macquarie Government has become under his leadership.

17. Greg Davidson

Greg Davidson is Group CEO of Datacom, Australasia's largest home-grown technology company, employing over 6,000 people across Australia, New Zealand, and international locations. He has led the company as Group CEO since 2018 after nine years as CEO of the New Zealand business. Under his leadership, Datacom has produced six consecutive annual cloud and infrastructure reports with research partner Tech Research Asia, making it one of the most rigorous longitudinal sources of ANZ cloud adoption data available.

His December 2025 year-in-review article articulated a consistent strategic thesis: that the decisions organisations make in 2025 and 2026 about cloud, AI, and data will shape the next decade of economic growth and social equity in Aotearoa and Australia. He writes publicly and with genuine conviction about what technology leadership requires at the national level, not just the organisational level.

18. Paul James

Paul James is the Government Chief Digital Officer of New Zealand, the most senior technology leadership role in the New Zealand public sector. He holds both the GCDO position and the CEO role at the Department of Internal Affairs. In 2025, he issued a new standard mandating that all public service agencies protect government-held personal information against foreign access, a direct response to the sovereign cloud debate.

He has spoken publicly on the government's cloud-first strategy, on New Zealand's approach to digital identity legislation, and on the balance between innovation and regulation in a small, digitally connected economy. His GCDO newsletters and BusinessDesk media interviews reflect the breadth of his public engagement on technology policy. He is active on LinkedIn and publishes content with genuine policy substance.

19. Alexandra Smart

Alexandra Smart is Chief Technology Officer of Southern Cross Travel Insurance, and was named CIO of the Year at the 2025 New Zealand CIO Awards. The judging panel praised her as an inspiring leader whose vision and strategic execution drove a comprehensive transformation of SCTI's core insurance platform, delivered on time and on budget while building a team culture that also won the Best ICT Team Culture award.

Her CIO Leadership Live interview with CIO Australia in 2025 described her approach to cloud-era transformation with rare candour: she noted that transformation only succeeds when it is treated as a business project rather than a technology project, and that the culture of empathy, structure, and maintenance within a technology team determines whether the organisation can move fast when it needs to. Her voice is valuable precisely because it comes from a practitioner who has actually delivered transformation.

20. Arul Arogyanathan

Arul Arogyanathan is Chief Information Officer at Village Roadshow and was named CIO of the Year at the CIO50 Australia 2025 Awards. The judging panel recognised him for the significant impact he made in AI enablement and stakeholder engagement, driving enterprise-wide adoption of AI and cloud solutions rather than maintaining isolated pilots.

His approach to cloud-era technology leadership emphasises the relationship between technology adoption and organisational culture: the CIO50 recognition reflects a body of work that went beyond infrastructure decisions to reshape how the business thinks about digital capability. He represents a category of practitioner that is critical to the ANZ cloud conversation: the enterprise CIO who is translating hyperscaler capability into genuine business value for a complex, multi-site organisation.

21. Linus Lai

Linus Lai is Chief Analyst for IDC Australia and New Zealand, the most senior independent technology analyst role in the region. He regularly provides public commentary on cloud spending trends, AI adoption patterns, and digital transformation benchmarks across Australian and New Zealand industries.

He appears in CIO.com's ANZ editorial coverage as an authoritative voice on what is actually happening in ANZ cloud adoption, independent of any vendor's messaging. His role positions him as one of the few genuinely independent voices capable of providing data-driven perspective on ANZ cloud adoption. His 2025 year-in-review commentary reflected IDC's longitudinal data on the ongoing challenges for CIOs navigating the cloud and AI transition in the region.

Cloud Services and Partner Ecosystem

The hyperscalers and the researchers set the agenda, but it is the partner and services ecosystem that actually delivers cloud transformation for most ANZ organisations. The people in this category lead the firms doing that delivery work, and their contributions to the public cloud conversation reflect hard-won practitioner knowledge of what cloud adoption really requires at the implementation level.

22. Damian Coyne

Damian Coyne became CEO of Cevo Australia in October 2025, bringing over 15 years of experience from Microsoft, Kloud Solutions, Contino, Versent, and CGI Australia. Cevo is an AWS Premier Consulting Partner that has delivered cloud, data, and AI transformation for over 200 organisations across commercial and public sector clients.

His early months as CEO were defined by a clear strategic message: that the market had reached a point of genuine AI disruption where businesses that did not act decisively would fall behind, and that the key to sustainable cloud adoption was ongoing delivery capability to evolve continuously. His January 2026 commentary on customer thinking about sovereign and hybrid cloud deployment for AI systems reflects the practical implementation questions that practitioners at his level are genuinely navigating. He is highly active on LinkedIn with substantive original content.

23. Michelle Bendschneider

Michelle Bendschneider is CEO of Connetico, the parent company of Arinco, Cevo Australia, and D6 Consulting, three of Australia's leading cloud and data services providers. Before joining Connetico, she held senior roles at IBM, Telstra, and Commonwealth Bank, including a COO role at PaperCut Software.

Arinco was named Microsoft Australia Partner of the Year in 2024 and the Microsoft ANZ Azure Partner of the Year in 2023, reflecting the quality of the cloud delivery capability she now leads. Her perspective on ANZ cloud adoption is grounded in the economics of cloud services delivery as much as the technology, which gives her commentary a commercial rigour that complements the more technical voices in this list.

24. Laura Malcolm

Laura Malcolm is Managing Director of Datacom Australia, leading the Australian business of Australasia's largest home-grown technology company. Her appointment brought a customer-centric focus to a business that serves enterprise, government, and infrastructure clients across cloud, data centre, managed services, and payroll.

Datacom's 2025 Cloud and Infrastructure Report, drawing on research from over 500 Australian organisations, is one of the most important longitudinal studies of cloud adoption in Australasia, and Malcolm's leadership of the Australian business positions her as a key voice on what cloud adoption actually looks like at scale across diverse industry sectors. She is a consistent presence at major ANZ technology events.

25. Jill Freyne

Jill Freyne is Healthcare Industry Lead for Amazon Web Services in Australia and New Zealand, a role that positions her at the intersection of two of the most complex cloud adoption domains in the region: healthcare and AI. She was a speaker at the Digital Health Festival 2026 and her background spans AI research, digital health innovation, and government-funded healthcare transformation across research and industry settings.

Her specific contribution is translating what AWS cloud and AI infrastructure can actually deliver into operational reality for Australian and New Zealand health organisations navigating clinical safety, data sovereignty, and digital health equity requirements. She is an active advisor and industry leader in the healthcare technology community, with a LinkedIn presence that reflects genuine engagement with the health sector cloud conversation.

26. Luke Clifton

Luke Clifton was appointed Director of Macquarie Technology Group in December 2025 after nearly 15 years in senior leadership roles at the company, most recently as Group Executive of Macquarie Telecom. He played a central role in introducing SD-WAN to the Australian market, championing Macquarie's sovereign security and cloud capabilities in the mid-market, and building strategic partnerships with Fortinet, Netskope, and VeloCloud.

His transition to a Director role reflects his shift toward governance and advisory work while remaining connected to the company's strategic direction. Nearly three decades of involvement in Australian managed services and cloud gives him a historical perspective on the evolution of enterprise cloud that is rare among active voices in the ANZ conversation.

27. Brian Senior

Brian Senior is Executive General Manager for Federal Government at Google Cloud Australia and New Zealand, a role that places him at the centre of Australia's sovereign cloud debate in the public sector. He brings more than 20 years of experience in sovereign hyperscale cloud solutions across federal, defence, state, and education sectors in ANZ, with prior experience at Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services.

His appointment was positioned as a direct investment by Google Cloud in its ability to serve Australian government agencies' specific needs for trusted, compliant cloud infrastructure. He is a champion for the adoption and expansion of the whole-of-government agreement between Google and the Digital Transformation Agency, making him one of the most directly influential voices on how Australian government cloud strategy evolves.

28. Marija Harris

Marija Harris was appointed Group Executive of Macquarie Telecom effective early 2026, having served as Commercial Director for the previous two years. She brings senior commercial leadership experience from Foxtel and Virgin and a track record of strategy, financial performance, and customer growth.

Her appointment to lead the telecommunications arm of Macquarie Technology Group at a time when cloud, security, and managed services are becoming central to the business positions her as an emerging voice on the intersection of connectivity and cloud infrastructure in Australia. CEO David Tudehope described her as bringing deep commercial insight, a strong customer mindset, and a collaborative leadership style aligned with the culture and growth ambitions of the group.

29. Daphne Chung

Daphne Chung is Research Director for Cloud Services and Software Research at IDC Asia/Pacific, one of the most authoritative independent research positions covering cloud computing trends across the Asia-Pacific region including Australia and New Zealand. She was quoted in the October 2025 Oracle and Google Cloud announcement on the launch of Oracle Database at Google Cloud in Australia, providing IDC's assessment of the multicloud shift taking place in Australian enterprises.

Her research on cloud services adoption patterns, multicloud strategy, and the economics of cloud migration gives ANZ technology decision-makers access to data-driven perspective that vendor-produced content cannot provide with the same independence. Her work is consistently cited in ANZ cloud strategy discussions and her commentary on enterprise multicloud decisions has influenced how technology leaders think about platform selection.

Practitioners, Educators and Community Leaders

The cloud conversation in ANZ is not only shaped by hyperscaler executives and academic researchers. It is also shaped by independent consultants, cloud educators, enterprise technology leaders, and community voices who have built platforms around genuine expertise and are actively sharing that expertise with practitioners across the region.

30. Inbal Rodnay

Inbal Rodnay is recognised as one of Australia and New Zealand's leading voices on AI and cloud adoption for professional services firms. She is the author of AI Magic, an Amazon number one bestseller, and was named an AI Leader of the Year and AI Consultant of the Year finalist in the inaugural 2024 Australian AI Awards. She holds a LinkedIn Top Voice in AI designation and has spoken to over 30,000 professionals across Australia and New Zealand since 2017.

Her work with CA ANZ, CPA Australia, Intuit, ProVision, and Law Australasia reflects a particular niche that is underserved in most cloud thought leadership: helping professional services firms adopt cloud and AI tools in ways that are practical, safe, and built for real-world constraints. She posts original content consistently on LinkedIn, with her 2026 AI tool radar analysis reflecting genuine practitioner insight rather than vendor narrative.

31. Katie McLaughlin

Katie McLaughlin is a Cloud Developer Advocate at Google, based in Sydney. She is a Director of the Python Software Foundation and one of the most active voices in the Australian developer community on cloud-native development, serverless architecture, and Google Cloud platform capabilities. Her advocacy work spans conference speaking, technical writing, and community building.

She speaks at international conferences and has been a consistent presence at Google Cloud events globally. Her contribution to the ANZ cloud conversation is at the practitioner level: she makes cloud computing concepts accessible to developers and engineers who are building cloud-native applications and represents the developer voice in a conversation that is often dominated by executive and analyst perspectives.

32. Loryan Strant

Loryan Strant is an independent Microsoft 365 consultant and 14-time Microsoft MVP, one of the longest-running recipients of that recognition in the ANZ region. He has co-authored two published books on Office 365 and Microsoft 365, and his blog The Cloud Mouth is one of the most consistent sources of practical, independent commentary on Microsoft cloud adoption in Australia.

His February 2026 post on M365 Copilot licensing issues reflected his willingness to name problems clearly and with technical precision, a quality that distinguishes his commentary from vendor-produced content. His audience is primarily IT professionals and enterprise technology teams navigating Microsoft cloud adoption, and his 14-year track record of MVP recognition reflects the genuine peer esteem he has built in that community.

33. Andrew Dome

Andrew Dome is Chief Digital and Information Officer at Uniting, one of New South Wales's major aged care and community services providers, and was ranked third in the CIO50 Australia 2025 list. He also received the 2026 Asia Pacific Stevie Gold Award for Most Innovative Technology Leader of the Year. The CIO50 judging panel recognised him for deploying Buddy, a generative AI assistant for care workers that has saved the organisation millions of dollars while reducing administrative burden on frontline staff.

His approach to cloud and AI adoption is notable for its focus on the people doing the actual work: his Buddy deployment targeted care workers rather than senior leaders, reflecting a philosophy that cloud-enabled technology only delivers value when it reaches the people closest to the outcomes. His public commentary on the intersection of technology, care, and operational efficiency is distinctive and informs the broader ANZ conversation on how cloud and AI adoption serves mission-driven organisations.

34. Stasha Rmandic

Stasha Rmandic is Head of Analytics and Insights at Whakarongorau Aotearoa, the organisation that runs New Zealand's government-funded telehealth and mental health services, and was named Emerging ICT Leader of the Year at the 2025 New Zealand CIO Awards. The judges praised her for bridging technical mastery with human impact.

Her work involves building the data and analytics infrastructure that enables a national telehealth system to respond at scale, which is a cloud-intensive challenge with direct public health implications. The recognition reflects a career that demonstrates what cloud and data leadership looks like in the context of public service, care, and national resilience. Her voice represents the next generation of ANZ technology practitioners who are doing genuinely consequential work.

35. Mark Drasutis

Mark Drasutis is Head of Value for Asia-Pacific and Japan at Amplitude, and brings a background that includes Chief Digital Officer at IAG, General Manager of Digital and Customer Platforms at the ASX, and Chief Product Officer for Digital at News Corp Australia. His commentary on ANZ AI and cloud adoption in early 2026 identified the key enterprise challenge as moving from experimentation to scaled, value-driven deployment.

He participated in the 2026 CEDA AI Community of Best Practice forum on the AI outlook for 2026, reflecting his standing in the broader ANZ technology leadership community. He is highly active on LinkedIn with original content that draws on his unusual depth of enterprise experience across financial services, media, and capital markets. His perspective on what cloud and AI adoption actually requires from senior leadership is grounded in years of C-suite implementation experience.

36. Hamish Archer

Hamish Archer is Chief Digital Officer at WEL Networks, a New Zealand energy distribution network, and was a finalist for CIO of the Year at the 2025 New Zealand CIO Awards. His background includes CTO roles at TSB Bank and IBM New Zealand, as well as significant work in the utilities sector.

His LinkedIn activity in early 2026 documented the completion of a massive multi-year data centre migration project at WEL, moving over 1,000 virtual machines and decommissioning or relocating 500 physical devices. That kind of detailed, practitioner-level sharing of a real cloud migration project is exactly the content that makes his voice valuable in a conversation that is often dominated by strategic announcements rather than implementation experience.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Building Your ANZ Cloud Knowledge Base

The first mistake is treating global cloud commentary as if it directly applies to ANZ. It does not. The Essential Eight, the Protective Security Policy Framework, the Privacy Act 1988, and the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 create a regulatory context that shapes cloud adoption decisions in ways that most globally-produced content does not account for. Build your reading list around voices who understand this distinction and write about it specifically.

The second mistake is confusing vendor content with independent analysis. The hyperscalers produce excellent technical documentation and genuinely valuable case studies, but they have an obvious interest in how the cloud conversation is framed. Independent researchers at IDC and Gartner, independent analysts and consultants, and practitioner voices who are not employed by cloud vendors provide a perspective that vendor content cannot. The best reading diet combines both.

The third mistake is following voices whose LinkedIn activity consists primarily of resharing. The amplification filter used in compiling this list distinguishes between original thinkers and amplifiers. Resharing is valuable, but it is not thought leadership. The people on this list are primarily producing original content.

The fourth mistake is underinvesting in the New Zealand cloud conversation. Australia tends to dominate the ANZ technology media, but New Zealand has distinctive cloud challenges and some distinctive cloud leadership. Paul James's government CDO work, Datacom's annual cloud research, and the ongoing question of how New Zealand-owned and operated cloud infrastructure relates to the hyperscaler offerings are all conversations worth following.

Book Jonno White to help your organisation develop the leadership conversations, team dynamics, and accountability culture that determines whether cloud and technology strategy actually delivers. Working with schools, corporates, and nonprofits around the world, Jonno specialises in the people and culture dimensions that make transformation succeed or fail. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Implementation Guide: How to Use This Directory

Start with the hyperscaler leaders who are most relevant to your current vendor relationships. If your organisation primarily uses AWS, Chris Casey, Rada Stanic, Pip Gilbert, and Louise Stigwood are the people whose public thinking will most directly inform your understanding of where AWS's ANZ strategy is headed. If you are primarily on Azure, Jane Livesey's public commentary on Microsoft's $25 billion ANZ commitment and the sovereign cloud implications of Microsoft's new datacentre regions is essential context. If you are navigating a multicloud environment, Paul Migliorini's commentary on the Oracle at Google Cloud launch and the broader multicloud thesis is worth reading carefully.

Then add the independent voices. Linus Lai at IDC and Daphne Chung's research at IDC Asia/Pacific provide the data-driven counterpoint to vendor messaging that every cloud strategy team needs. Rajkumar Buyya's research on quantum cloud and AI infrastructure is the academic foundation for understanding where the technology itself is heading. Aidan Tudehope's commentary on sovereign cloud is required reading for any Australian organisation with government contracts or regulated data.

For the practitioners and educators, the value is in the implementation detail. Mark Drasutis on the shift from AI pilots to production. Damian Coyne on the evolving cloud delivery model. Hamish Archer on the realities of a multi-year data centre migration. These are the voices that translate strategy into something you can actually use in your next technology decision.

Organisations seeking facilitation for executive team offsites, Working Genius workshops, or keynotes on leading through the age of AI can reach Jonno White at jonno@consultclarity.org. International travel is often far more affordable than organisations expect, and many clients find that bringing a skilled external facilitator costs less than engaging high-profile local providers.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the most influential cloud computing thought leaders in Australia?

The most influential cloud computing thought leaders in Australia span several categories. In terms of direct impact on how Australian organisations adopt cloud technology, Chris Casey as AWS Managing Director and Jane Livesey as Microsoft President set the pace for hyperscaler strategy. Rajkumar Buyya at the University of Melbourne is Australia's most academically prominent cloud computing researcher. Aidan Tudehope at Macquarie Government is the leading voice on sovereign cloud and government cloud security. Among independent practitioners, Inbal Rodnay and Mark Drasutis are two of the most active and credible voices on cloud and AI adoption strategy.

What makes ANZ cloud computing different from global cloud trends?

Several factors make the ANZ cloud context distinctive. The Australian government's Essential Eight cybersecurity framework and Protective Security Policy Framework create compliance requirements that shape which cloud services government agencies and their contractors can use. The data sovereignty debate in Australia centres on whether hyperscaler sovereign cloud offerings genuinely prevent foreign legal access to Australian government data, a question Aidan Tudehope at Macquarie Government has addressed more directly in public than almost any other voice. In New Zealand, the government's cloud-first strategy and the arrival of Microsoft's and AWS's first local hyperscale datacentre regions are reshaping how Kiwi organisations think about data residency and digital sovereignty.

What is sovereign cloud and why does it matter for ANZ organisations?

Sovereign cloud refers to cloud infrastructure that is architected, operated, and governed to ensure data remains subject to the laws and jurisdiction of a specific country. In the ANZ context, this matters because Australian government agencies handling sensitive or classified data must ensure that data cannot be accessed by foreign governments or contractors without Australian legal process. The key distinction is between data residency (where data is physically stored) and data sovereignty (who can legally access and control that data). In 2025, several hyperscalers publicly acknowledged limitations on their ability to guarantee sovereignty in the European context. The ANZ debate about whether hyperscaler sovereign cloud offerings meet the genuine requirements of the Australian Protective Security Policy Framework continues to evolve.

How should organisations approach FinOps and cloud cost management in ANZ?

FinOps, the practice of managing cloud financial accountability to deliver business value, has become a priority for ANZ organisations as cloud spending scales. According to the FinOps Foundation's 2026 State of FinOps report, teams that reach mature FinOps practices achieve cost reductions of 20 to 30 percent without degrading performance. For ANZ organisations, the starting point is visibility: understanding the full cost of cloud across all providers, allocating costs to specific teams and workloads, and building the internal culture of cloud financial accountability that makes optimisation possible.

How can I follow these thought leaders on LinkedIn?

All 36 people on this list are searchable on LinkedIn by name and organisation. The most productive approach is to search for each person's full name alongside their current organisation, follow their profiles, and then engage specifically with the content that is most relevant to your own cloud challenges. Original posts and articles provide more insight than reshared content. Several people on this list, including Inbal Rodnay, Damian Coyne, Mark Drasutis, and Loryan Strant, post original long-form content regularly that is worth reading carefully.

Final Thoughts

The cloud computing conversation in Australia and New Zealand is maturing rapidly. The infrastructure investment by AWS, Microsoft, and Google Cloud in the region has moved from announcement to operational reality. The policy frameworks governing how government and regulated industry use cloud are becoming more sophisticated. And the gap between cloud ambition and cloud delivery is narrowing as organisations develop the internal capability to make cloud work the way they hoped it would.

The 36 people on this list represent the range of voices needed to navigate that maturity. The hyperscaler leaders committing and deploying billions in regional infrastructure. The academics producing the research that will define cloud architecture in five years. The sovereign cloud specialists ensuring that Australia and New Zealand have genuinely locally-controlled alternatives to global infrastructure. The practitioners doing the hard implementation work and sharing what they learn. And the independent educators and consultants helping the broader technology community build the skills and judgment to make good cloud decisions.

Book Jonno White for keynotes, workshops, or executive offsite facilitation that helps your leadership team navigate the people and culture challenges that determine whether cloud and technology strategy succeeds. Jonno is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator and author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold). Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, author of Step Up or Step Out, and leadership consultant who has worked with schools, corporates, and nonprofits around the world. His book Step Up or Step Out has sold over 10,000 copies globally, and his podcast The Leadership Conversations has featured 230+ episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries. Jonno founded The 7 Questions Movement with 6,000+ participating leaders and achieved a 93.75% satisfaction rating for his Working Genius masterclass at the ASBA 2025 National Conference. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Jonno works globally and regularly travels for speaking and facilitation engagements. Organisations consistently find that international travel is far more affordable than expected. To book Jonno for your next keynote, workshop, or facilitation session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Sources

Amazon Web Services: About Amazon Australia, 2026, aboutamazon.com.au.

FinOps Foundation: State of FinOps 2026, finops.org.

Microsoft Australia News Centre: Microsoft ANZ $25 billion investment announcement, April 2026.

Spark New Zealand: State of Cloud 2025, spark.co.nz.

Next Read

For more on the global voices setting the cloud agenda beyond ANZ, read the 35 leading thought leaders in cloud computing at:

https://www.consultclarity.org/post/thought-leaders-cloud-computing