Telecom New Zealand has been in the news for all sorts of reasons over the last couple of months, but in my opinion the most interesting story has been overlooked…
The Cortex Cloud Control Panel started off its existence over ten years ago, as a set of provisioning services, management tools, security tools and reporting systems which were custom-built for Telecom New Zealand by a company called EMS-Global. Telecom NZ was a pioneer in the field of hosting business applications and services, which meant that much of what was needed to manage its offerings had to be custom-built.
Over the following years, a product called “Cortex” evolved out of the original collection of tools and utilities used at Telecom. Most of the code used in Cortex was re-written from the original VBScript to the more current VB.NET. The services company EMS-Global was reborn as the product company EMS-Cortex.
Today the Cortex Cloud Control Panel is used around the world by many leading Telco’s and Hosted Service Providers, including TELUS, USA.NET, FPWeb, Melbourne IT, Unisys and Atos Origin. The list of products supported by Cortex has continued to expand and now includes; Exchange, SharePoint, Broadsoft, OCS, SQL Server, IIS, DNS, Virtual Servers, Backup Solutions, Citrix XenApp & XenDesktop, Terminal Services and more.
Every month, an average of five additional Service Providers from around the world, sign up for Cortex to manage their Cloud Offerings.
Telecom New Zealand remains a loyal customer of Cortex through its Gen-i business unit that uses the latest version of Cortex to manage its Cloud offerings, including Exchange, SharePoint and other hosted business applications.
Additionally, Telecom NZ is a significant shareholder of EMS-Cortex, through its investment in TMT Ventures, which owns a 60% stake in the company.
It could be said that Cortex, which was born in Telecom New Zealand, gives new meaning to the phrase “Land of the Long White Cloud”…
Mark Loveys 
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