We would like to congratulate our own Alex Lawn on his appointment as Managing Director of Catalyst IT Australia!
Passing over the baton, Andrew Boag, founder of Catalyst IT Australia and Catalyst IT Canada, had relocated himself and his family to the other side of the world, to focus on leading Catalyst IT Canada to new heights on a full time basis.
“With our Canada team going from strength to strength, and growing to a team of 20 people over the last five years, this change is a natural progression of Catalyst’s ongoing success,” says Andrew.
Both, Alex and Andrew have been contributing to our company’s success for over 20 years, dating back to their early days at Catalyst IT’s global headquarters in Wellington, New Zealand.
Above: Andrew and Alex at KubeCon | CloudNativeCon, Europe 2018 event in Denmark.
Andrew spearheaded the global Catalyst expansion by launching Australia division in 2008, and invited Alex to join him shortly after.
“Looking back, 2010 was a real turning point,” says Alex. “In just a few months, Catalyst went from a small team of five in a shared office in St Leonards to a growing company of ten, moving into the CBD. Almost overnight, it felt like we’d become a “real” business.”
“It was also during this time that many of the traditions we still enjoy today took shape: Pizza Thursday tech talks, bad movie nights, team dinners, and semi-competitive outings like axe throwing, go-karting and bowling.”
“In those early days in Australia, we moved offices several times – including one stint where we took over an old Qantas executive office. I still remember looking around as the whole team pitched in to move desks, monitors, servers, filing cabinets, and even a 500kg safe, and thinking: Geez, we’ve got a great team. And that’s still just as true today. Andrew had left the Australian business in a strong position as we look to the future, and we are incredibly grateful for his leadership.”
“It’s been an amazing 18 years in Australia, we’ve gone from strength to strength and built a great local team,” says Andrew. “We have wonderful clients who value innovation, and who work with us on growing the potential of open source software and new business opportunities.”
“We now have a team of 60 people, many have been with us for over 10 years. We have a lot of young talent too, and emerging leaders, who are passionate about technology and problem solving.”
“Our growth and success over the last 18 years, and the fact that our clients always rank us top of class on technical integrity, are things that would not be possible without the technical and operational leadership of people like Alex. I know Catalyst IT Australia are in good hands. The business has never been in a stronger position and I am looking forward to witnessing even bigger successes in the coming years.”
With a deep understanding of the demands of higher education providers and enterprise level companies, Alex specialises in infrastructure automation, performance tuning and resilient cloud-native deployments. As the leader of Catalyst’s Operations and Infrastructure Team for many years, he played a key role in scaling some of the largest Moodle environments in the southern hemisphere, and growing Catalyst IT Australia’s team capabilities.
On the home front, Andrew and Alex are in very different worlds right now – Alex has settled his family in sunny Orange, NSW, while Andrew and his family are settling into the cooler change, and looking forward to mastering skiing and ice skating.
On the work front, however, nothing has changed, and they will continue working together, and with other Catalyst regions, on delivering the best service and 24/7 Follow the Sun support to our clients across the globe.
Above: Andrew and Alex at Catalyst IT Australia’s Townhall event, Sydney 2026.
“I am leaving Catalyst IT Australia team in very good hands,” says Andrew. “I know Alex will ensure strong continuity of leadership whilst also inevitably bringing a different style of leadership to the company.”
Andrew remains on the Catalyst IT Australia board with a very active interest in the company.
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