Air New Zealand is moving its secondary data center operations away from IBM, putting them under the control of local service provider Gen-i following a "catastrophic system failure" last year, which caused travel chaos for the airline's passengers.

Air New Zealand's CEO Rob Fyfe fired off a scathing email to staff following the incident, caused after Air New Zealand's disaster recovery managed by IBM failed as Air New Zealand's online, check-in and call center systems all failed for more than seven hours on 11 October last year.

"In my 30-year working career, I am struggling to recall a time where I have seen a supplier so slow to react to a catastrophic system failure such as this and so unwilling to accept responsibility and apologise to its client and its client's customers,"Fife said to staff.

In the email, Fife said Air New Zealand felt IBM had not reacted fast enough to fix the problems caused by the outage, in turn leaving air New Zealand "high and dry".

IBM said at 9:03 that morning ÔÇô just after Air New Zealand starting to experience its own system problems - its back-up generator at its Newton Data Center in Auckland failed.

Following the incident, IBM said it was building a new NZ$80m facility in Auckland, but the final straw for Air New Zealand came when it said it was delaying its opening, previously earmarked for December 2009.

Gen-i, New Zealand Telecom's IT and services division that is also the airlines telecommunications provider, said it will design, build and run the new data center that will connect to Telecom's main exchange in Auckland.

Air New Zealand has not cut all ties with IBM, however. It said it will still use the technology giant for its core data center operations, honouring a contract which takes the partnership through to 2012.

IBM now expects to open its new data center in Auckland in March.

"IBM supports Air New Zealand's decision to move from the Nelson Street site, having decided not to enter into formal discussions with the airline about their data centre requirements at this time," IBM said in a statement issues to the NBR (the National Business Review).

"As the global leader in data centre research, design and implementation, IBM looks forward to opening New Zealand's first IBM Reliability Level 3+ Data Centre at Highbrook Business Park in March next year."