It looks like Air New Zealand is shifting its mainframe away from IBM as the airline is concerned about the IT giant delaying its planned 16,000 sq ft Auckland data center announced in December last year.

IBM said it was planning to invest $80m over 10 years but a public spat with Air New Zealand over service levels following an outage and reported concerns that ibm is dithering over the announced data center has seen the airline shift supplier move its IT into a facility operated by Telecom owned Gen-i. The orginal IBM announcement said its data center would be operational this year but it is now expected to be ready in 2011 at the earliest.

The shift does not signal a major shift in the relationship between IBM and the company, the airline said.

IBM will provide support for the mainframe at the new site.