Our Story
Founded in New York City in 1996. Built on one straightforward conviction about what good IT leadership looks like.
Where it started
Macktez was founded in New York City in 1996 by Michael Horst and Noah Landow. Horst came from molecular biochemistry and biophysics; Landow from architecture, design, and database development. Different backgrounds, same observation: the organizations they worked with needed senior technical leadership but couldn't access it on practical terms. Large firms were slow and expensive. Smaller shops lacked the depth to engage at the strategy level.
They started Macktez to occupy that gap: a focused practice that could engage at the executive level, treat infrastructure as a long-term business asset, and follow through on the work itself rather than handing off to a junior team after the kickoff.
The client list has grown steadily through referrals, not marketing campaigns, which is how most relationships that last a decade tend to start.
How we approach the work
Every engagement starts by understanding the business, not just the technology. We ask where the organization is going, what the operational constraints are, and what the infrastructure needs to support over the next several years. Technology decisions follow from that context. Strategy first; tools second.
We engage at the C-suite level, working directly with CFOs, COOs, and CIOs on technology strategy, architecture, and the roadmaps their teams can actually execute.
In many engagements, Macktez serves as a fractional CTO or CISO: the senior technical leadership an organization needs without the overhead of a full-time executive hire. Every engagement is led by a senior practitioner, so you get direct access to the expertise you're paying for, not a project manager routing questions to someone else.
We are also particular about the diagnostic work. Root causes matter more than quick fixes. A problem identified correctly and resolved once costs considerably less than the same issue patched repeatedly. Understanding a system well enough to fix it correctly is a consistent thread across everything we do.
Thirty years in
The model hasn't changed much since 1996: stay focused, engage honestly, and leave every client with more capability than they started with. We don't take on everything. We focus on what we do best: infrastructure strategy, architecture, buildout, and ongoing management. And we stay involved for as long as it's useful.
The clients we work with tend to stay. Some relationships span years; some span the better part of two decades. That's not something you can engineer. It's the result of doing the work well and being straightforward about what it involves.
At Macktez, we build trust. Not as a marketing statement, but as a description of how the work actually gets done.
That's been true since 1996.