Startup Story Corner: Relieving Engineer Headaches and Saving the Entire Ship, Using AI to Streamline Incident Management and Response
- Shahni Ben-Haim
- Apr 10
- 3 min read
A few months ago, I attended HasoubLabs Accelerator program's Demo Day, which showcased Arab entrepreneur-led startups. There, I met Zakher Shalah, a tech innovator whose AI-driven solution reduces engineers' headaches. Figuratively, of course.
He knows firsthand how small issues can spiral into major crises.
After almost 20 years as an SRE and DevOps Engineer, Zakher set out to solve a problem that had plagued him throughout his career. Picture a mouse gnawing a hole into the hull of a ship. At first, it seems small and insignificant, but left unchecked the tiny opening can grow. Without properly dealing with the issue in a timely manner, water can rush in and inevitably sink the entire vessel.
For companies dependent on the vigilance of DevOps teams, however, the stakes are just as high. If these seemingly minor infrastructure issues aren’t addressed in time, it can escalate into system failures, leading to financial losses, loss of end-user trust, and an open door for competitors to take the lead. For engineers, infrastructure issues aren't just a minor crack they can ignore; they’re critical threats that demand immediate attention, no matter the hour or location.
In October of 2022, Zakher founded qaTT, an AI ChatOps solution helping engineering teams solve issues faster with GenAI technology.
The company’s first product, qaTT Nova is an AI agent, SRE copilot, specifically designed for incident management. It assists SREs and DevOps engineers by detecting and resolving infrastructure issues more efficiently. qaTT Nova centralizes infrastructure management tools and monitoring systems, using large language models (LLMs) to personalize troubleshooting strategies. This makes complex issues more manageable and significantly reduces resolution times.
But qaTT doesn’t stop there.
It aims to minimize human error, speed up root cause analysis, and streamline incident response workflows. Currently, qaTT Nova focuses on read commands, with options for write operations, and infrastructure configuration changes. The team is also exploring AI-driven project management features for future iterations, addressing the growing complexities of cloud infrastructure management.
You might be wondering, with SRE copilots already on the market, what sets qaTT apart?
qaTT stands out with its personalized approach, building a custom knowledge base for each customer, delivering step-by-step solutions tailored to their environment. It reduces tool fatigue by centralizing monitoring, alerts, and actions directly within Slack or Teams, and accelerates MTTR (Mean Time to Resolution) by enabling real-time, AI-powered insights.
Zakher has already achieved significant traction building qaTT.
So far he’s raised pre-seed investment from Takwin VC, is supported by major cloud providers, AWS, Microsoft, and Google, and signed an agreement with Salesforce to integrate their solution into AppExchange. Zahker has also launched the MVP version of qaTT Nova, and is working with Profisea-Labs to enhance qaTT’s data security.
So, what’s next for qaTT?
Zakher recently joined the Launch Accelerator, which has been a launchpad for startups like, PodcastAI, Prosperous AI, River Platform Company, TaxGPT and more. Over the next two quarters, he is focused on releasing the beta version of qaTT Nova to early adopters, improving response accuracy through real incident data, and establishing seamless customer knowledge base integration.
And what does qaTT still need?
When I asked Zakher about his biggest challenge, he shared, “building the product and starting to bring in the first customers.”
That’s where the community comes in.
If you or someone you know leads a DevOps, SRE, or engineering team, Zakher is actively seeking design partners to help refine qaTT Nova and bring it to market. And for those interested in investing, qaTT’s vision of modernizing SRE and DevOps engineering with GenAI is an exciting opportunity to support the future of incident management.
qaTT integrates seamlessly with Slack, offering real-time, actionable operational insights across all cloud assets. As a business partner with Salesforce, qaTT is at the forefront of next-gen monitoring applications powered by generative AI.
If you want to learn more about qaTT (https://www.qatt.online/) or explore partnership opportunities, connect with Zakher Shalah or email him at zakher@qatt.online or info@qatt.online. Together, you can help build a smarter, more efficient future for cloud operations.
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