NEW ZEALAND BUSINESS NEWS
Empowering Kiwi Businesses
An Auckland company founded by entrepreneur Tamawera Owens has launched a set of connected business applications that customers can run on their own computers, on dedicated hardware supplied by the vendor, or through a New Zealand-owned cloud service. The platform, called Sovereign Intelligence, targets organisations with between five and 1,000 staff, particularly those that handle sensitive information or work in sectors where data residency and security matter.
MRTY showed the product at a private event at Gibbs Farm, north of Auckland. The pitch is that a business can keep its email, files, jobs, and customer records in one system it controls, rather than spread across applications run by offshore technology companies.
The suite covers email and communications, workflow management, customer relationship management, document storage, security, and business intelligence. MRTY built it to replace a stack of separate subscriptions with a single system where messages, documents, jobs, and conversations sit together.
Individual products carry their own names. IScrape connects and searches a business’s records. Email Link converts incoming correspondence into tasks. LENZ handles communications and collaboration, FLOW manages workflows, and LIRP covers customer relationships. MRTY Si is the intelligence layer: staff can ask it questions about their own organisation and get answers drawn from internal information, while the software can draft emails and tasks for a person to approve.
The first product available is MRTY Vault, a password manager that keeps credentials on the user’s device instead of in a central cloud account. Access requires a master password, a key held on the device, and biometric authentication through a passkey. Information is protected with AES-256 encryption, and the company states that it cannot see inside a customer’s vault.
The launch lands in a market where most businesses rent their software and AI tools from large overseas groups, and have little say over where the resulting information is stored or how it is used. MRTY’s proposition is that organisations should be able to adopt AI without handing over ownership of what their day-to-day operations generate.
Owens has linked the business to his experience building companies that depended on external digital platforms. That dependence leaves a business exposed if a provider changes its terms, restricts access, or alters how its systems behave. He has framed the company’s case around what happens when a platform a business relies on changes its rules or switches off access.
The company is concentrating on professional services, engineering, construction, legal, financial services, agribusiness, and Māori organisations. Those sectors tend to face stricter expectations around confidentiality, records management, and where information is stored.
For a small or mid-sized operator, the practical question is whether one controlled system beats a collection of subscriptions. Businesses pay for dozens of applications and leave many licences unused, and the answer isn’t another app, but the last one they need to buy.
Cost is part of that calculation. As prices rise, many organisations are reviewing subscription spending across multiple systems, and a platform that consolidates email, files, workflows, and customer records into one place gives buyers a single line to examine rather than several.
The sovereignty question matters most where records are confidential or where a customer or regulator expects information to stay in New Zealand. Running the software on existing office computers, dedicated hardware, or a local cloud gives those businesses an option that does not rely entirely on offshore infrastructure.
MRTY’s launch reflects a broader discussion in New Zealand and overseas about digital sovereignty and local control of data. That discussion has gathered pace as governments, Indigenous groups, and businesses weigh what it means for AI systems to be trained on information held by global technology companies.
Owens has participated in international discussions on Indigenous rights and artificial intelligence, focusing on digital sovereignty and how technologies that affect Indigenous communities are governed. MRTY is exploring data sovereignty work with Māori and Aboriginal communities.
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