Q: Where in the world are you located?

Great question – I think in this day and age it’s easy to just say I’m located where I need to be at the time: one window away from the digital world. Physically though, my home is the beautiful Indian Ocean Island of Mauritius.

Q: What is the Virtarix story so far?

Our story is a simple one really, and it goes a little something like this: a few tech-loving friends and colleagues with many years (from 10 to 20+ years each) of exposure and experience in cloud, hosting and technology
banded together resources and embarked on this venture; to apply our skills and ideas into a world we love greatly and live daily. Our goal at the outset is to rock the apple cart a little with our best bang for your buck value proposition, while offering rock solid infrastructure, predictable performance and exceptional customer service.

Q: You’re based in Africa. Do you recruit local talent and if so, how does the market compare to tech centers in the US, Europe, and Asia?

We recruit talent, full-stop. Geography is not really a defining factor in terms of talent or skill, but it does have a play on cost. While the roots of some of our team (myself included) may be in Africa, we aren’t bound by this and already span 5 countries (and counting). An anecdotal observation about talent in South Africa is that individuals often possess broader, more generalized skills rather than deep specialization in a single discipline. This isn’t to say there aren’t experts—there are many. However, skilled professionals typically perform well even outside their primary domain, likely due to workplace demands that require versatility over a narrow focus.

Q: You’ve had quite a career, working for Acronis, Metrofile, Z1 Storage, and others. Are you a serial entrepreneur? What drives you to start companies?

It’s just the beginning! I wouldn’t categorize myself as a serial entrepreneur really, but rather a parallel entrepreneur. I’ve always enjoyed a side hustle to my primary gig as it keeps things interesting and staves off my greatest fear: corporate monotony! Starting companies is a by-product of what I like doing: finding solutions to complex problems, or finding new ways to improve on existing solutions.

Q: You’re in some typical datacenters (Dallas, Frankfurt, Singapore) but also in a couple places we don’t see often: the UAE and Johannesburg. Let’s start with the UAE. We don’t see a lot of offers in the Middle East because of high datacenter and network costs. How do you see that market?

The UAE is a unique market, and yes, high network DC costs are a huge deterrent. Also, the size of the market one can service is fairly small in comparison to many of the more common regions. Top this up with difficult to navigate bureaucracy and big-name/designer brand preference, and you start to get a sense of what you’re in for… However, it’s not all doom and gloom! The UAE is however a rich, vibrant and digital first market, and stands out as a shining example of one of the typically cringy industry buzzwords: “Digital Transformation” – this is a region that truly embraces the benefits and convenience of technology in nearly every aspect of business and personal life.

Q: Is Johannesburg a growing IT center in Africa? What are the big IT cities on that continent?

Johannesburg is a prominent player in the African IT context – being the heart of corporate South Africa. It’s home to many African and South African tech and telco behemoths (Dimension Data, Vodacom, MTN etc) and incubates great talent and ventures. Other major players in Africa (and not in any particular order) are Nairobi in Kenya (Silicon Savannah) , Lagos in Nigeria (The Silicon Lagoon), Cape Town in South Africa (Silicon Cape, my other home), Casablanca in Morocco, Tunis in Tunisia, Cairo in Egypt and Kigali in Rwanda.There are of course others as many of the 54 (UN recognised) countries foster their own tech innovation and pioneer across industries, from AI, to Fintech, Medtech, Agritech and anything in between.

Q: You offer both VPS and VDS. Some providers use the terms interchangeably but it appears with Virtarix there is a difference. What is it?

VPS is the entry to mid-tier offering. Shared CPU, Disk, Memory and Network. It covers the needs for 90% of our clients perfectly well as they are performant and reliable.

VDS on the other hand is a level-up; If your workloads require sustained CPU load >50% and you want guaranteed access to these cycles then VDS is the better choice. It comes at a premium, because you get dedicated CPU cores exclusively assigned to your workloads and you can consume this to its maximum potential without fear of breaching AUP’s or thresholds.

Q: What is your company culture like?

Quirky, cool and casual on the interpersonal side; rigid, nerdy and cautiously creative on the technical and systems side.

Q: What’s next for Virtarix?

World Domination!

Jokes aside, right now we are in the early growth stages. We’re attracting new clients with our lucrative pricing and excellent service. We will continue to add new locations over the course of the next 24 months. We look to enhance our customer facing tools to streamline onboarding of new workloads and workload types, while offering the same no-nonsense, easy to use ethos we launched our service with.

Be sure to check out their most recent offer here on LowEndBox, which features systems as big as 128GB RAM and prices starting at only $5.70/month (for a 16GB RAM system on a quarterly deal).  Check it out!