Blue Crystal Solutions MD Vito Rinaldi celebrates 21 years of the IT service provider

He tells CRN Australia about the lessons he’s learned, how to fail fast and what has changed in the industry.

From humble beginnings as a database company to now a supplier of cloud, application, infrastructure and database management service, IT solutions Blue Crystal Solutions is celebrating 21 years of business in 2025.

The Adelaide-based company began as a Oracle database company in the managing director’s home.

Then within a year, they became a SQL Server database company, and following that within a couple of years, they were doing Oracle high tech rank environments in an office space.

Managing director Vito Rinaldi spoke to CRN Australia about what he’s learned on this 21 year journey, the importance of failing and the advice he’d give to those MSPs just starting out.

Throughout running Blue Crystal Solutions, one of the lessons he’s learned as a CEO of a solutions provider is, adapt or die.

“Adapt, change, make a customer your hero. How do you make your customer a hero? Your customer is your number one,” he explained.

“How do we solve their business problems? Listen and understand. Within our organisation our focus to our current customer base is paramount.”

Rinaldi is very proud of the culture he has created within Blue Crystal Solutions, and he said good culture is created by listening to his employees.

From employee surveys, to team building events and even having a Donkey Kong machine in their office, Rinaldi was adamant on having an office where his staff can collaborate, network and be together.

“It's giving people responsibility and allowing them to try different things, and you do new things,” he said.

Have a go

One of the biggest problems Rinaldi has in his business is that people don’t want to try new things.

He said what he found in the industry is when people hit a certain age, they don’t want to experiment within their career anymore.

"When you're in your in your 20s, you try new things and you fail, you get up and go, when you hit 45, 50, oh my goodness, they don't want to change. They don't want to do new things because they don't want to learn again,” he explained.

Rinaldi said people learn by failing, and he in fact encourages failure in his organisation. For those leaders who are facing the same challenges, he said keep encouraging and rewarding those who are failing.

“We always reward people that come up with new, innovative ideas and all that we got a productivity momentum thing happening at the moment. How do we reward people? And that's one of the challenges I'm having now is how do we reinvigorate?”

Rinaldi is currently creating a resurgence agenda to ensure more of his staff are trying new things and having a go.

“I'm setting targets for that to be a higher priority. Resurgence has a higher or equal priority than revenue and sales the moment,” he explained.

“It's about, yes, we’ve got the old world but how do we get to the new world? And the new world is adapting and changing things and that's challenging.”

What has changed the most in the industry

Looking back at the industry over the past 21 years, Rinaldi noted that the fast tracking of technology like AI has changed, as has the adoption of technology.

“There's more systems in place that are around to make our jobs easier and that's definitely changed. Software as a Service (SaaS) is big, and that's changed the industry a fair bit,” he said.

“AI has been around for the last 30 years, but the adaption of it, and the learning language modules that are coming through over the last two or three years are basically mind breaking.”

Advice to other MSPs

For those who have just started their solutions provider career, and have been battered by inflation rates and tariffs, Rinaldi encourages them and says “keep on going”.

“Keep doing it, keep hanging on. Obviously, you got to manage your cash flow and don't spend with outside your means. If you got a dream and you're passionate, go for it,” he said.

“You don't know where it may take you. However, if you've got the passion and you got the dream, the ideas, and you've got the know how to do it, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

“So many people never thought that Blue Crystal Solutions would succeed 20, 21 years ago. It's hard work and determination, and long hours,” he ended.