40 Years of Houston

Year 1986

Happy 40th Birthday Houston!

I arrived in New Zealand from Malaysia intending to study and see where life might lead, not expecting to stay. Hamilton changed that. It was a place where a newcomer could participate before proving himself, where business was built through conversations rather than introductions, and where relationships formed naturally over time.

Choosing to settle here was less a strategic decision than a recognition that this was a community in which you could lay down roots, build something enduring, and be judged by how you contributed rather than where you came from.

40 years in Hamilton, still local.

When Houston began in Hamilton in the mid-1980s, computers were difficult, expensive and often temperamental. The ‘cloud’ was in the sky, and ‘AI’ was a robot in a sci-fi novel.

Clients did not want innovation for its own sake, they wanted certainty. The early lesson was simple and enduring: technology only has value when people understand it and trust the people delivering it. 40 years later, that remains the centre of how we work.

Year 2000s

Year 2010s

We have moved from standalone machines to networks, from servers to cloud platforms, and now into artificial intelligence. Each wave promised to replace the previous one completely, at a faster rate each time.

Year 2010s

We have moved from standalone machines to networks, from servers to cloud platforms, and now into artificial intelligence. Each wave promised to replace the previous one completely, at a faster rate each time.