Razak Mohammad Ali, Co-Founder at Altnix LLC

Great Companies: How did you get your idea or concept for the business?

Razak Mohammad Ali: We discovered the idea for our business when we were talking to IT managers handling IT infrastructure at various organizations. Cost of software tools was a concern for them and were exploring options to reduce the cost of licenses as much as possible. We knew that open source software offers the lowest possible license cost. Hence we ventured into specializing in open source solutions for our clients. Altnix today provides many open source solutions for a variety of use cases that solve challenges in handling or managing the IT infrastructure.

Great Companies: What are the various services provided by Altnix LLC?

Razak Mohammad Ali: Altnix provides Consulting, Implementation, and Professional services for Managing IT infrastructure using open source solutions. This includes IT monitoring, Automation, IT Service Management, IT Analysis and IT operations use cases. We specialize in helping companies through the entire journey of adopting open source solutions at their organizations for the long term. We can manage traditional on-premises infrastructure as well as next generation Cloud platforms such as Amazon AWS, Azure Cloud and Private Clouds.

Great Companies: What makes Altnix LLC different from hundreds of other similar service providers?

Razak Mohammad Ali: While many service providers exist, Altnix is unique in the sense that we understand IT infrastructure in-depth along with open source software that can be used to manage such infrastructure. Very few competitors are able to offer such a mix of open source and infrastructure expertise.

Great Companies: What were the struggles and challenges you faced and how did you overcome them?

Razak Mohammad Ali: Initially many customers we talked to typically did not understand the methodology for using Open source solutions especially for Infrastructure Management. The adoption trajectories for Open Source is very different from Enterprise proprietary software that require licenses. Hence there was nervousness or reluctance to adopt solutions we propose. We spent significant time in Education, Training and Consulting with clients on allaying their concerns on venturing into relatively unknown open source solutions. Once we started to show success at key organizations, other clients were easier to convince.

Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What does 5 years down the line look like for Altnix LLC?

Razak Mohammad Ali: Our prediction is that the journey towards Open Source is inevitable for most organizations. It is going to be just a matter of time before all organizations use Open Source in one form or another. Market dynamics, Technology maturity of Open Source solutions and macroeconomic factors such as geo-political turmoil, inflation and high cost of technical resources are all driving clients towards Open Source options. We are expecting a 10x growth in our business and our team in the next 5 years.

Great Companies: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be?

Razak Mohammad Ali: If you are venturing out new, be open in your mind. Listen to your Customers very carefully and adapt your solutions to meet their needs. Services industry is all about listening to the customer and providing a service or a product that meets their needs. If you stop listening to your customers, your business will die quickly.