We invited you to ask questions about WEDOS. Here are the answers. I hope this is of interest to you. If there is interest, we will be happy to repeat everything.
The questions are uncensored, the answers too 🙂 . The questions are in the order they came in on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
- Pavel Dvořák – How much did the whole investment cost until now (all your costs, etc.). Have you seen the bulk of it returned and when do you estimate it will return?
The investment to date (financially speaking) has been just over 30 million crowns, with just over half of that going into servers and IT technology (plus additional servers already from operations). Less than half is for buildings and equipment. Of course, you have to add to all this a lot of time spent, a lot of effort, experience and ideas. That’s probably the most valuable part of the whole thing… (there are no financial tables for that).
Return on investment? Depends on the angle. In terms of the fair market value of the company, the investment has certainly already paid off. In terms of economic results, a return can be expected by the end of 2015 or in 2016. We will see how we do and we will see what investments we will have to make in relation to growth.
- Josef Němec – For example, who owns WEDOS and where does the company pay taxes?
WEDOS Internet, a.s., is a joint stock company, which currently has approximately 300 shareholders. The largest shareholder is Josef Grill, who holds about 87% of the company’s shares. It is expected to gradually reduce its share. Other shareholders are mostly individuals from among our customers (see our share subscription in 2012). The company is Czech, based in the Czech Republic and so we pay taxes in the Czech Republic. We are currently in a loss in terms of income taxes (there are relatively high depreciation of our investments) and so we do not pay income tax yet. We pay Czech VAT, currently about CZK 250,000 per month.
- What are its ambitions on the Czech market?
Our ambitions are high. We are currently the largest hosting company in the Czech Republic in terms of active web hosting and VPS. At the same time, our WEDOS Disk service is the most widely used Czech data storage and backup service. We are working on other services we want to offer. Perhaps we can reveal that in addition to secret projects and ideas, we are preparing a very competitive (or rather unrivalled) offer of dedicated servers and then some other innovations to existing services. We probably won’t reveal the rest. We do not plan services that have (from our point of view) little added value (housing, etc.).
We want to test whether there would be interest in our services abroad. For virtual servers, we are already successfully selling them abroad, even though our entire website is only in Czech.
- Is it possible to buy a share?
Currently this is only possible from another shareholder. More details in the next answer to the next question.
- Pavel Dvořák – Will it still be possible to buy WEDOS shares?
At the General Meeting 14 days ago, it was approved that, if necessary, the share capital could be increased by a further public subscription of shares. This comes into consideration if we would like to build a WEDOS 2 Datacentre based on oil cooling (a)or if we need funds for investment in case of some rapid growth in sales of our services. Currently the company owns everything (including the building) and we are going without leasing and loans.
- Domco Kacik – do you like me?
Yes, we love all our current and future (and ultimately past) customers. We appreciate everyone.
- Radek Simkanič – Will there be a possibility to connect via SSL in the future?
What exactly do you mean by SSL? HTTPS for web hosting? That’s what we have – http://kb.wedos.com/webhosting/https.html.
- Peter Pavlinsky – Will you open the round of new shareholders? When?
The answer was above. This cannot be ruled out in the future. It is a better (and especially safer) way of financing than loans or leases. Moreover, in our country it has many other advantages – shareholders are the best salespeople.
- Tom Lavicky – How many clicks per day between all your commission areas ?
Every day it is from 5000 to 12 thousand clicks.
- Michal Kolesa – What is an internal trade secret so that people don’t ask unnecessary questions and then get disappointed ?
There are some things related to know-how and some things that we are preparing. We don’t want to give away anything that is still in the idea or preparation stage. This could jeopardise the commercial success of the new service.
- Josef Prišt’ák – Have you ever got drunk and went to change passwords to servers?
Nothing like that happens here. We have quite strict rules and complicated procedures for this…
- Tom Hopi – Can you swim?
We can swim 🙂 .
- Tomáš Přeučil – Is there anyone brony in your company?
We haven’t looked into that and we don’t really address that. We judge people by their work performance, not by similar characteristics…
- Pavel Dvořák – Do you write the administration in pure PHP or some framework, what kind? Nette, Zend or other? Alternatively, is everything in PHP or is another language used?
We have our own framework, administration only PHP, server control java.
- Kamil Oboril – How many village admins sleep daily?
The support works 12-hour shifts (11.5 + 0.5 break). So he’s sleeping fine. The others go for 8 hours and since the servers are reliable, everyone gets a good night’s sleep.
- Pavel Krejčí – If the data on your servers is damaged (for example due to flooding), am I entitled to compensation for damages, costs of corrective measures and lost profits?
There is no threat of flooding. The data centre is about one kilometre from the river and 23 metres above the Vltava River. You are only entitled to a pro-rata discount on the monthly fee, with some services free for a month. You would have to have an individual arrangement to qualify for anything else.
For hosting services, the situation is the same as for telecommunications operators (mobile phones) and energy suppliers (gas and electricity). You are also not entitled to compensation in the event of an outage.
- Petr Lyčka – how many ladies work for you and are they nice
There are 3 of them, but 2 of them are currently on maternity leave. You can find our people at: http://www.wedos.org/cs/lide.html, but it’s not updated. We will improve and complete the website.
- Pavel Krejčí – It’s more a situation where I have an enterprise system running in the north of Wedos, etc. If I back up once a day, I can still lose a whole day’s data…
We have WEDOS Disk and you can backup there every day and as many times as you want and which service you want…
- Petr Lyčka @Pavel Krejci: So it’s a different situation, but if I’m not mistaken they have backups separately
We have backups on disk arrays. Of course, we encourage everyone to back up themselves and more often. Sometimes it’s better to have more backup than less.
- Michal Kolesa – what is the difference between them and you http://www.svetandroida.cz/technicke-zakulisi-hostingu-svetandroida-cz-201306
The primary difference is that we are in our own premises and not renting from a foreign company. So we are not economically and organisationally dependent on someone. We are not threatened by price increases or even by the fact that someone wants to do something differently than we need. We are responsible for the quality ourselves and we can do the best we can ourselves.
In terms of technical background, the parameters of our datacentres are comparable.
In terms of infrastructure, we have everything dual, fully redundant. The network backbone is fully 10 Gbps, 3 x 10 Gbps connections. In this respect, we are among the top hostels.
We have ISO certification from TÜV SÜD – ISO 9001 (quality management), ISO 14001 (environmental management), ISO 27001 (information security). Our datacenter is currently the most economical solution in the Czech Republic.
- Petr Kubala – what is the total capacity (TB) of the datacenter and how much electricity does it consume per month?
We have 1.2 PB of data. I hope we are counting right 🙂
We consume around 45 MWh of electricity. If we didn’t have everything so extremely economical, it would be on the order of 2-4x as much for the same power. The energy-saving processors alone save tens of percent, we save tens of percent thanks to free-cooling, a quality cooling concept, another percent thanks to energy-saving servers and last but not least we take care of other savings (LED lights, energy-saving other technologies – UPS, etc.).
- David Antolik – Do you use or have you considered using any SDN technologies – for example OpenFlow ?
It doesn’t make sense yet. We’ve seen some presentations on it. We’ll see in the future.
- A little bit about server configuration – Webservers – Configuration for domains you have 1 general virtualhost, static files are accessed with webserver rights and php via some general setuid wrapper (I think apache supports in some configurations also autodetection according to the owner of the .fcgi file, but I don’t remember it much). Then you solve domain routing by symlinks, so you have physical data in /data/web/virtuals/[ID]/ and in virtualhost an alternative path to the symlink, where you rewrite it. Then you only make aliases by creating another symlink. Is that right?
Each site has its own virtualhost, each has its own user, he accesses there through the setuid wrapper, so to static files apache accesses through one user (everywhere the same) and to php files accesses php through the wrapper, ie with the rights of a particular user. Aliases within the site via apache rewrite.
- Communication with servers – do you use any available communication interface for this or have you written your own agent? In what?
I own everything.
- Databases – How do you handle updates? Do you use replication or do you do updates with outages?
For normal services, there would be an outage in the event of an update. Of course, we can do it in other ways, but it’s not necessary.
- Dedicated servers – How do you protect against using an IP address other than the assigned one? You didn’t have this solved on VPS once, have you cleaned it up yet?
Not exactly. We’re dealing with the aftermath. We have monitoring there and if someone uses a different IP address than the one they have, they risk being shut down.
- Michal Kožuch – Since you didn’t answer me by email, I’ll ask you here. Will you finally hire a proper web designer for your coloring pages on the homepage and customer administration?
We apologize, but we respond to all inquiries. We don’t know where the loss occurred. As far as the look is concerned, we are going to make some changes, but the main page will be very cheerful in the future. It will certainly continue to be a colouring book. We also tested a version without coloring pages and sales were significantly lower. We also want to handle administration a little differently in the future.
- David Antolik – I like their webdesign, it is quite unique and it doesn’t have to be all in one copy! Please don’t take him
As stated. We are planning some cosmetic changes, but nothing major.
- Patrik Kristian – Why should someone use or even pay for a wedos disk when there is unlimited space on the webhosting?Jiří Bělský – Because you can only have on the webhosting what has something to do with the web ? Patrik Kristian to.
The answer is in the web hosting terms:
http://hosting.wedos.com/cs/webhosting/neomezeny-prostor.html
WEDOS Disk and web hosting are completely different services.
- Lukáš Fér – Full What is your earnings per day?
Currently, our average turnover is 120-130 thousand crowns per day (including Saturdays and Sundays) excluding VAT. We are constantly building and investing. So we are not talking about profit, in the true sense of the word, yet. If we deduct our investments, i.e. depreciation and we will take the so-called. EBITDA (earnings before interest taxes and depreciation and amortization) , we can now be around CZK 20-25 thousand per day. We will present the results at the end of the year. This indicator is still rising because costs are rising less than revenues = simply put, we are getting more out of each new service than we would with fewer clients.
Don’t expect us to be drowning in money… We invest everything back, we are always inventing and constantly building. We are still buying more technology. We consider it an investment. In essence, we are “sowing the seed” so that we can have a great “harvest” in the future. We are subordinating everything to the growth and expansion of the company so that it will be the largest, strongest and most stable in the future.
Just for inspiration. Our biggest cost is wages, followed by electricity and connectivity. In the last year and a quarter we have grown by more than 100% and we are still the same number. Most of our efforts go into development. It takes us less time to run the service. As the number of clients grows, wages, connectivity and electricity will not grow as much as revenues…
- Blažej Krajňák – Do you support any charity projects (do you provide hosting or financial support)?
We support charity projects. More information here: http://hosting.wedos.com/cs/sponzorstvi.html.
- David Kohout – Can WEDOS swim ? How well? How many pools will WEDOS make? What style does WEDOS swim most often? At what speed does WEDOS most often sail? Can WEDOS swim underwater without a stuffy nose and with its eyes open? How many metres will WEDOS swim underwater?
Yes, WEDOS can swim, WEDOS can’t swim. It’s made of concrete, but a pool would be nice. We have a room over 33 metres long. The next datacenter will be by the pool, which will be heated by waste heat. Then we’ll certainly train more. The WEDOS 2 datacenter will be poolside = somewhere to shower if the oil handling doesn’t go as expected 🙂 .
- Pavel Krejčí – When will we see Windows web hosting with ASP.NET support?
We’re currently testing something with a third party. We don’t know what will happen next, but it’s certainly not a matter for the next few months. There is minimal interest so far and we don’t have enough quality and experienced people to service it to the quality needed. So now VPS.
- Martin Kokeš – How does it look with the offer of dedicated servers?
The framework has been tested, the concept has been thought out, tested. I’m negotiating with the suppliers, waiting for some minor adjustments and then we have to set up a few things at our place. If it all works out, it’s realistic that we’ll deploy them.
- Lukáš Kohout – With every major rain, not to mention floods, important weather websites are regularly unavailable. That’s why I wonder if you have the infrastructure to handle such a large load. Furthermore, whether you would be willing to help the authorities or even associations (e.g. http://radar.bourky.cz/) to offer the possibility of hosting, taking into account the possibility of occasional extreme load.
We could have done it. We’re not worried about that. We have the capacity. Someone just has to convince them… From a business point of view, we do not force or persuade anyone to come to us. Either he wants to or he doesn’t. We don’t even have a dedicated sales department to do any bidding.
- Tomáš Nývlt – What are the salaries for technicians, programmers, “chat operators”?
This is a matter we would like to avoid 🙂 . Our wages are above the general statistical average, plus bonuses and extra pay for working nights, weekends, etc. At the same time, a share of future profits is embedded in the share plan.
Everyone has it according to merit, knowledge, experience and also the price of their profession on the labour market. In general, we do not pay badly. In any case, we train, teach, educate, work with the latest technology on a successful project and work with a great team.
- Karel Juřík …I’d be interested in those shares too
Answers above. Perhaps an addendum. Up to 70,000 new shares are currently authorized.
- Tonda Kmoch – When you become a completely dominant provider, won’t you raise prices?
That would be the road to hell… Certainly this is one of the things we don’t plan for and is taboo in our country.
Perhaps this unprepared and daring video will give a clue. Excuse the quality, but it’s without preparation and with servers:
- Fakam Panos – Will the webcam ever be restored?
Yes, the camera’s ready. We have a few and we’ll just put it on the web. Maybe this week.
- Pavel Novák – what systems and daemons do you use (mostly) and what is your total capacity, disk. Space available ?? 🙂
Answers above. We will repeat that we have everything in-house, we primarily use CentOS 6.4 (gradually upgrading from 6.3), virtualization runs on KVM from RedHAT, web servers are Apache.
Disk capacity is about 1.2 PB.
- Lukas Kurucz – What exactly and how does the system run that takes care of automating all things when setting up hosting, VPS, etc.?
All PHP and Java. Own product. Based on experience since 1997 and developed internally on the “green field” at WEDOS since January 2010.
- Jan Barášek – I wonder why pararel PHP processes don’t behave as you write. Supposedly I can run 5 scripts at a time. However, if I open something time-consuming in one tab (for example, just a simple infinite loop), the site is unavailable for ALL users until the HTTP request is completed (or rejected by the server) – and I only used one process out of 5. 🙂
No, indeed each server has assigned processes. You have to do something in the script that calls other PHP processes or waits for something. I’m sure you can try it another way. Try it from different machines at the same time.
- When they talk about PHP processes, does PHPMyAdmin count?
No, if you use our PHPMyAdmin, it is on a different server and does not count towards the PHP process count.
- Pit Harpli – How far along are you with advances when the deep one goes nuclear?
We have customer stuff in Hluboká, we also back up critical internal stuff elsewhere. We are also preparing a geographically separated backup. Don’t worry, the nuke won’t go to Hluboká, but to much more attractive places :-). Hluboká is interesting for tourists and not for this kind of thing.