A Q&A with Anturis CEO Sergey Nevstruev. The San Francisco-based startup, which offers an SMB-focused IT infrastructure monitoring and troubleshooting platform, launched out of beta in late June. It was founded in 2011.
SUB: Please describe Anturis and your primary product innovation.
Nevstruev: Anturis, a vanguard IT solutions company, is the developer of IT infrastructure monitoring and troubleshooting solutions for small-to medium-sized businesses [SMBs]. Anturis delivers businesses of all kinds a 24×7 comprehensive monitoring and troubleshooting service that is feature rich, affordable and easy to set up and use. Dedicated to SMBs that generally do not have access to, or budgets for, a dedicated IT department and highly-skilled IT professionals, Anturis’ solution delivers web services and IT infrastructure monitoring and troubleshooting in a simple, easy-to-setup and use browser-based cloud solution.
As our beta version confirmed earlier this year, SMBs typically utilize similar IT technologies and we were able to collect key data about these systems and technologies and build a product that does not require users to be skilled IT experts—and they loved it.
SUB: Who are your target markets and users?
Nevstruev: Anturis is targeted to a wide range of businesses that do not have access to, or budgets for, a dedicated IT department and highly-skilled IT professionals. These businesses come from numerous industries—including retail, banking, IT, entertainment, education and many more. While these businesses may not be very large in size, having a successful online presence is critical to survival.
Our specific users are usually system administrators. However, they are also webmasters, IT consultants, and system engineers—really anyone who is responsible for the business’ IT performance and maintenance.
SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition? What differentiates Anturis from the competition?
Nevstruev: Historically, many businesses use Nagios or other free, open-source software. However, adoption of open-source monitoring software demands solid IT expertise or past experience and includes difficult efforts to set up and maintain. It also requires extra hardware resources for installation. Quite often in these cases, businesses are forced to hire premium and costly consultancy services. The idea behind Anturis is to eliminate these expensive costs, [and] to ensure that SMBs can invest more resources to their core business.
Over the past few years, several cloud monitoring solutions have come to market. However, they generally provide a limited feature set, such as only website monitoring, and do not fully meet the needs of the target audience.
SUB: When was the company founded and what were the first steps you took in establishing it?
Nevstruev: Anturis was founded by successful IT entrepreneurs and venture investors Serguei Beloussov, Max Tsypliaev and Ilya Zubarev in 2011.
The first year, we focused on building our core and essential technologies, such as our global monitoring network, cross-platform monitoring agent, and incident analysis algorithms. This followed with an alpha launch in mid-2012 and a beta launch in February, 2013.
The Anturis team is now backed by a seasoned IT experts and software engineers who have all worked for leading global IT companies and startups including Parallels, Kaspersky Lab, Veeam, Amdocs, Atempo and K7 Cloud.
SUB: What was the inspiration behind the idea for Anturis? Was there an ‘aha’ moment, or was the idea more gradual in developing?
Nevstruev: Our founders, who each spent more than 15 years in the IT industry, observed the pain that SMBs are suffering while dealing with their IT infrastructure. Unlike 10 years ago, IT is now is critical for every business.
SUB: How did you come up with the name? What is the story behind it?
Nevstruev: The name of our company, Anturis, is a blend of two words—‘Anthurium’, the name of a beautiful flower, and ‘software’.
SUB: You launched out of beta just last month. Why was it the right time for your full commercial launch?
Nevstruev: We received a large amount of positive feedback from our beta version testing, fine-tuned the application, and further tested the performance and reliability of our solution. The Anturis service was primed and is now ready for the commercial launch.
SUB: Have you raised outside funding to this point?
Nevstruev: Yes, we are closing our round A, and will officially make a formal announcement shortly.
SUB: Do you have plans to seek additional venture funding in the near future?
Nevstruev: Not at least for the next 12 months.
SUB: What have the most significant obstacles been so far to building the company?
Nevstruev: Finding the best industry experts is not always an easy task. We now have a great team of professionals with vast experience in place.
SUB: How does the company generate revenue or plan to generate revenue?
Nevstruev: Anturis is a paid service based on subscription. Our customers pay monthly or annually.
SUB: What are your goals for Anturis over the next year or so?
Nevstruev: We have just launched our commercial product solution. Over the next several months, we will be focusing on developing sales channels, building the brand, and further partnerships, which will create the foundation for further growth.
Anturis – www.anturis.com
