Case Study: First Gas achieves rapid 4-month integration of 10 systems and saves millions with Microsoft Dynamics 365

New Zealand pipeline startup connects “spaghetti bowl” of systems in just four months

First Gas is a New Zealand natural‑gas pipeline company formed in April 2016 from the merger of two major pipeline businesses. Faced with the need to stand up a greenfield IT environment and deploy 10 critical line‑of‑business systems in just four months—while avoiding high SAP leasing fees and quickly gaining operational independence—First Gas needed a fast, cost‑effective integration strategy.

Working with partner Theta, First Gas built on the Microsoft cloud: Office 365, Dynamics 365 for CRM, Dynamics NAV 2016 for finance (with Maximo on‑premises), and an integration layer using Azure Logic Apps, API Management, Service Bus, Functions and Azure Monitor. The team connected the complex “spaghetti bowl” of systems in about a month and went live within the four‑month target, saving millions in third‑party SaaS fees, achieving elastic scalability (Dynamics handled four times expected connection requests), and gaining cloud resilience and lower ongoing infrastructure costs.

First Gas

Huw Griffiths

Chief Information Officer