Altaro Software’s successful internationalisation

Altaro Software’s global success story stems from very humble beginnings. It all started in 2009, when four Maltese entrepreneurs with prior ex-perience in the IT sphere – David Vella, Stephen Chetcuti Bonavita, Julian Pace Ross and Simon Attard – combined their resources to set up a backup software company together.

Today, Altaro Software is a Maltese company that develops award-winning data protection software solutions that are used by more than 50,000 businesses and organisations all over the world. Successfully competing against international giants in the industry, the company employs more than 115 employees worldwide and has offices in the US, the UK, Germany, France and North Macedonia with headquarters here in Malta.

Delivering high-performance products and service

“When we decided to join forces, we put all our personal savings together and invested €45,000 into Altaro,” recalls Vella, Altaro CEO.

“We felt it necessary to get the most out of our limited funds, so we started out in a basement, using second-hand desks to save on costs.”

The company focused on solid product development, creating solutions that were reliable and accessible, designed with the target market in mind. Slowly but surely, Altaro gained recognition as a reliable, trustworthy company that delivers high-performance software solutions and, international technical and has received commercial awards along the way.

It has attracted customers in more than 121 countries – businesses and organisations of all shapes and sizes, from fledgling companies to sprawling enterprises to world-known entities such as Amazon, NASA, Peugeot, Microsoft, the BBC and others.

To ensure sterling service to all its customers, Altaro not only focuses on developing quality products, but also prides itself on providing lightning-fast, 24/7 technical support. This sets the minds of customers and partners at rest as, should they need assistance, they know there is an Altaro product expert at the end of the line (or e-mail or chat box!) at any time.

Another key ingredient is marketing.

“The first step of the journey is to build a robust product offering that people need; the next step is to get the word out there and to do so on a worldwide scale,” said Vella.

Going global

“Our vision was always to go global, with all the challenges and rewards that can bring,” he explained.

“We adopted a structured, strategic approach to ensure we got the best value out of each initiative. We focus on target markets; we work with local partners wherever possible, authorizing them to resell our products; and we invest heavily in digital marketing to establish and maintain a solid online presence. We also attend relevant events overseas – though obviously that was limited this year due to the pandemic.”

Becoming established overseas is arduous and costly and requires drive and endurance.

“Any structures to help with internationalisation, be it through financial support for overseas promotion, advice, incentives, or even introductions to the right bodies overseas, are appreciated,” Vella pointed out.

“Assistance from Malta Enterprise and TradeMalta has helped us to continue growing and to meet our global outreach goals. TradeMalta offers wide-ranging support to Malta-based businesses seeking to go international making the leap easier.”

Building on the Maltese identity in international markets

At the heart of this company’s success is its team of dedicated, bright, team-spirited employees.

“As a homegrown Maltese company, we’ve built our work ethic and culture on the foundations that form part of the Maltese identity: intelligent, hard-working, ambitious, feet on the ground, family-focused, with community values,” added Vella.

“This has been central to all we have achieved, and we are indebted to the entire Altaro team.”

Altaro Software is a 100 per cent export company and aims to continue growing and delivering value to the communities it operates in, its customers, partners and the Altaro team itself.

For more information about Altaro, visit https://www.altaro.com

For export-related assistance, visit https://www.trademalta.org/

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.