Meet Ziv Kashtan, CEO of Cloud Solutions and DevOps Provider: Automat-IT

Automat-IT is one of the world’s fastest growing providers of AWS cloud solutions. As an AWS Premier Consulting Partner, we have a track record of helping customers reduce time-to-market, improve customer experience, and achieve unlimited scalability and significant cost savings.

One of the reasons for the success of Automat-IT, I believe, is the way we spend time with our customers to really understand their business and their needs. We originated out of the “startup nation”, Israel, about 10 years ago. So while we work with large multinationals, we have a particular passion and expertise for startups – after all, it’s not that long ago when we were starting up ourselves.
 

How did it all begin?

 
In 2012, I was working for Amdocs, a leading international software and services provider. I suggested to Amdocs that the company set up a DevOps capability. DevOps and ‘the cloud’ were very much in their infancy but I could see how the technology was developing quickly.

Unfortunately – or as it turned out, fortunately – the idea didn’t take hold. I felt so strongly that a fundamental shift in IT was underway that I had to take the risk and set up my own business. I’m delighted to say that, today, Amdocs is one of our customers.
 

Why did you choose to focus on startups?

 
When we started, DevOps was very new; so as pioneers in this field we played an important role in educating our home market, Israel, on the use and benefits of cloud infrastructure. While we continue to work with large companies like the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, we saw that we could make a big difference to businesses that were just getting started. As a startup ourselves we understand the challenges that they experience: the need to scale up, make quick releases, and keeping costs under control.
 

 
Our dynamic and scalable services enable businesses to automate and streamline their operations so they can achieve rapid growth at low cost. There are cases when we have signed a contract and completed the project within the same month – you can say we have a winning formula with start-ups.
 

Which of your recent projects are you particularly proud of?

 
We had the privilege of establishing a cloud environment for the health-tech company, C2i Genomics, which has developed an AI-based platform to promote personalized medical care for cancer patients. We established an AWS cloud environment for C2i Genomics, fully compliant with European regulations, facilitating its expansion into new markets and helping a growing number of cancer patients worldwide.

Another project we are also proud of is our work for ad-tech company, Skai. We helped migrate its business to AWS from a data centre containing thousands of servers. The results: no limits on adding and scaling-up customers, reduced onboarding time from 8h to 30 mins, improved customer experience and reduced running costs.
 

What does the future hold for Automat-IT?

 
We are a focused all-in AWS company that does super-quality work, becoming AWS’s leading partner in EMEA in the field of startups. We are committed to strengthening our partnership with AWS, with whom we recently signed a multi-year strategic agreement.

Right now, we are excited about our plans to enter the European market where we will be at the AWS Summits in London (7th June) and Madrid (15th June). We have already established local branches in the UK and Spain and have started doubling our workforce – everything necessary to continue providing the highest standards of service to which our customers are accustomed. We can’t wait to be able to help transform Europe’s start-up sector into the world’s best.