I am currently in Christchurch being hosted by HP at their offshore Applications Modernisation center located here. Christchurch is the home town of my grandfather so was of note for me, it is also the home base for most things in Antartica, which explains the cold spring I guess. It is an interesting location, a city of 400,000 or so people, two strong universities and a captive market in the sense of limited attrition or movement out of the city, the NZ South Island likes to be a little removed from the north Island and Auckland in particular.

It is very much a niche market, there are other companies aside from HP here, and it is clear that along with HP, some of the Indian based providers are using it as a base for broader work in more expensive NZ markets such as Auckland and Wellington and Australia. Any capabilities further afield than ANZ will have to be using best practices and in niche markets, such as Public Sector or in the case of HP Apps Modernisation.

With a high Asian student population, and transient tourist aspect to the economy there is perhaps the opportunity for developing a broader level of non-English capabilities here but this will not be significant