Bootstrapped MSP AltTab automating IT with AI

Queensland-based cybersecurity service provider AltTab is focused on providing a hybrid managed service model, bridging in-house and outsourced IT needs.

In an interview with ARN, co-founders Simon Rose and Charles Paramananthan said the IT service provider currently operates with a team of 20 and leverages artificial intelligence (AI) for day-to-day tasks. It’s customer base now spans utilities, local councils, schools, and universities.

The service provider has an AI strategy built around three levels of support: basic support, configuration support, and complex issue resolution.

AltTab also conducts AI readiness assessments, placing strong emphasis on data governance and cybersecurity compliance.

Looking forward, the MSP plans to evolve into an intelligence provider, supporting customers’ AI journeys and ensuring regulatory compliance.

However, Rose and Paramananthan see the challenges from larger vendors pushing AI without proper customer readiness.

Manages service providers (MSPs) don’t necessarily have a “fear of AI itself”, the fear from them is more about the pushing AI down onto their teams.

“You’ve got companies heavily pushing AI at the executive level, and then the executives push it down to their staff,” Rose explained. “All these big vendors have huge sales teams out there with targets [and] they push customers to buy things customers may not be ready for.”

Paramananthan believed customers “know they need to use AI”, or at least talking about it.

“Sometimes they’re stuck on where to start,” he said. “What we help them do is find really simple use cases to solve…that’s usually where we start.

“We [also] talk to a lot of customers about is doing an AI readiness assessment. [Looking at] how AI ready they are and what that means.”

This can prevent AI “accidentally” exposing private data. For example, explained Rose, if an organisation is using platforms like OneDrive or SharePoint, then a list of documents needs to be created and classified as not to be read by AI.

There needs to be an awareness of the problems this can create if this isn’t done.

“What might happen is, suddenly, AI starts surfacing documents like payslips or sensitive internal files that were never meant to be accessed by AI,” said Rose. “Just because they weren’t properly classified or governed.

“That’s the kind of conversation we’re having with people.”

Growing need for advice

That’s why it’s important for the AltTab team to understand the customer’s goal for the AI product they want to implement. As well as help end-users navigate the growing complexities in the governance space.

“If they’re not sure, that’s okay [and] we’ll share what others in their industry are doing with AI,” Rose said. “We ask them if this is something they’re being told they should use.”

“That’s the place in the market for MSPs, to be the trusted advisor that [customers] can come back to guide them or give them some information that they can take away.”

Rose and Paramananthan know there’ll be increased conversations with customers around data security, data governance and are taking proactive steps to support customers with the right information.

“We do have legal advice that informs us of what our responsibilities are as an MSP. Everybody must be protected when providing services,” said Rose. “We know, at the moment, what the responsibilities of MSPs are: get in, help the customer, and be a part of the reporting process.”

“If we identify something within a customer’s network, we notify them [and] we follow them up to make sure that they would notify the [people] they need to.”

AltTab believes the way forward for the IT service provider is potentially bringing “legal along to the pre-sales journey”.

“Traditional sales models is [having] a salesperson or a technical salesperson, go down and talk to a customer,” Paramananthan said. “In this data governance, cyber security space… the legal side of things is ever-changing.

“Essentially, that [legal] person is going out and supporting the salesperson as a kind of source of information.”

Having that conversation with the customer is fundamental because they are probably unaware of what’s happening in the market, noted Paramananthan.

“We haven’t quite implemented that yet, but that’s something that’s on our mind around a future journey of where [or] how we might, support our customer base,” he said. “Also it might generate more business as a result of educating customers along the way.”

Be a differentiator

Having the ability to bring in these types of services for the business plays to AltTab’s strength of “giving customers control without sacrificing support”. It’s a core ethos, and one of the IT service provider’s “biggest differentiators”, said Rose.

Founded in 2023, IT industry veterans Rose and Paramananthan had a shared vision to lead the way in delivering innovative technology solutions

“Charles and I have known each other for about seven or eight years now,” said Rose. “We did a bit of research into the market to see if there was a real opportunity and we believed there was.”

What they found was that Queensland was a “unique, relationship-driven market”, said Rose. “Businesses there prefer working with local providers; they don’t like to be sold to; and they value personal relationships.

“Most of the smaller IT and cybersecurity companies in Queensland had been acquired by larger players, as a result, those intimate, local relationships had started to disappear.”

After conducting research focused on both customers and former employees of those now-acquired small firms, Rose and Paramananthan “was a clear gap” in the market.

“Queensland was missing a small, nimble, and responsive system integrator and cybersecurity provider,” explained Rose. “There was a growing need for a company that could build genuine relationships and actually deliver on promises.

“Something the larger players, burdened by bureaucracy and ticket systems, were struggling to do.”

According to Rose and Paramananthan the MSP has “grown steadily”, with a small team, a great customer base, and strong relationships across the board, that includes customers, partners, vendors, and industry insiders.

“Most of the people we work with today are folks we’ve built trust with over the past few years,” said Rose. “They’ve seen that we can step in, offer real support, and deliver outcomes.”

“One of our biggest successes has come from what we call our hybrid managed service model.”

This was born from the challenges many end-user businesses face when they go back and forth when outsourcing their IT.

“They manage IT in-house, then outsource, then try to bring it back in-house, but they often hit a resource or skill gap along the way,” Rose said. “That’s where we come in. With our hybrid model, we give our clients the same tools and access our own engineers use.

“That means they can handle what they’re comfortable with, and we step in for the more complex or critical components.”

This collaborative approach allows AltTab to take ownership when needed, without locking customers out of their own systems.

Despite being only 22 months old, the MSP was awarded the MVP Productivity Award at Pax8’s 2025 Beyond Partner Awards, held in Denver from 8 to 10 June.