From model choice and pricing to where your data sits under the Privacy Act 2020 — how osFoundry compares with Google Gemini for New Zealand organisations, and how dgm helps you implement it.
dgm is an independent osFoundry integration partner — not affiliated with the company that makes osFoundry, and dgm has not yet completed any client integrations. This article describes services dgm offers, not past results.
Google Gemini is Google’s assistant tied to Workspace and Google Cloud. osFoundry approaches the problem from a different angle — it is a model-agnostic orchestration layer. This article compares what actually matters to New Zealand organisations, and where the two can sit side by side (for example, using Google Gemini for a specific job while osFoundry is the layer that selects the model and controls the data).
What osFoundry is
osFoundry is a model-agnostic AI orchestration platform: you bring your own model keys (BYOK), pricing is usage-based with no per-seat fees, and it is local-first and self-hostable. Data can be pinned to a chosen managed region (US, EU or Japan) or run entirely in your own cloud account or on your own machines.
Side by side
| Consideration | osFoundry | Google Gemini |
|---|---|---|
| Model choice | Model-agnostic; bring your own key (BYOK); switch models freely | tied to the Gemini model family |
| Pricing | Usage-based, no per-seat fees | usually per user or bundled |
| Hosting / data location | Choose a region (US/EU/Japan), self-host in your own cloud account, or run local-first | a Google cloud service |
| Fit with the Privacy Act 2020 | Self-host in an Auckland region or run local-first to keep data in New Zealand | depends on the region and the provider’s terms — check case by case |
What New Zealand organisations should weigh up
For New Zealand buyers the factors that usually matter most are where data sits under the Privacy Act 2020, flexibility of model choice (including open-weight models via BYOK), and cost structure. Per-user pricing can be poor value when you have many occasional users, while usage-based pricing tracks real workload more closely — assess it against your own usage.
Data and where it lives
osFoundry’s managed cloud can pin data to its US, EU or Japan regions — there is no managed New Zealand region (the nearest managed options are Australia or Japan). If you need data to stay in New Zealand, the practical options are real today: AWS Asia Pacific (New Zealand), region ap-southeast-6 in Auckland, has been generally available since 1 September 2025, and Microsoft Azure New Zealand North (newzealandnorth, Auckland) is generally available — so you can self-host osFoundry in your own in-country cloud account (BYO cloud), or run it local-first on your own infrastructure. Google Cloud has no New Zealand region (the nearest is Sydney, australia-southeast1). There are also NZ-owned sovereign providers — Catalyst Cloud, Datacom and CCL/Revera — that keep data under New Zealand ownership and law. One caveat worth stating plainly: the US CLOUD Act (2018) lets US authorities compel data held by US-headquartered providers regardless of where it is physically stored, so an Auckland AWS or Azure region improves physical location and helps with the Privacy Act 2020 but does not by itself remove the jurisdictional exposure of a US-parent provider. Physical residency is not the same as jurisdictional sovereignty — verify the right region and provider for your own risk profile.
How dgm can help
dgm is an independent integration partner that helps New Zealand organisations put osFoundry to work — from choosing a worthwhile first use case through to the hands-on build and connecting it to the systems you already run. dgm can help your organisation work out whether Google Gemini, osFoundry, or both, fit your use cases — and then do the build. dgm is not affiliated with the company that makes osFoundry, and it has not yet completed any client integrations, so what is described here is the service dgm offers, not past results. If you want help scoping a realistic first project, dgm can work through it with you.