Ask Afrihost CEO Gian Visser anything

[Afrihost-Gian]

What security measures do you take to prevent the takeover of your shared hosting servers as in the case of the WebAfrica/Anonymous hack. South Africa has many talented hackers would Afrihost be open to holding a hackathon where screened hackers are invited to find security exploits on you hosting?

Hey Kurt. We take a whole myriad of measures to try and protect our shared hosting environments. I obviously can't detail them all here on a public forum, but it is definitely something that our Sys-admin team focuses on every single day. I like your hackathon idea. I'll float this balloon with our Sys-admin team. But like most Sys-admins they are very protective of their systems so I can't guarantee that it will happen! Thanks for the idea though!

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

How is it that Axxess is able to offer slightly cheaper prices than Afrihost when Afrihost is the parent company?

What?! Heads will roll!! Seriously though, Axxess build their products and experiences independently of us. Sometimes they see gaps or opportunities that we miss, and sometimes it’s the other way around. We love working with them for that reason. And we can always copy their great ideas.

PS. Axxess, thanks for keeping our ISP of the Year award safe for last year. But we're coming to pick it up soon ;-)

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

What's a typical day like for Gian Visser?

In a nutshell: Usually starts at 5 when I wake up for some prayer and God time. At 6 I wake the kids up to get ready for school and embrace all the wonderful chaos that entails (while the kids get ready I usually manage to do some pull-ups, push ups and kettlebell squats. Emphasis on 'some') After the school run I usually get into work between about 07h45 to 08h15 depending on the delight that is JHB morning traffic. And then each day is vastly different depending on what's happening in the life of Afrihost. The usual ingredients are: internal team meetings; external client or supplier meetings; (lots of) discussions with my fellow directors; speaking at events; answering of emails; stalking of MyBB forums; and a whole host of other things that will remain top secret. I then head home late afternoon/early evening where I have dinner with my wife and 4 kids. We then bath the kids and I read them bedtime stories, we pray and I sing sweet lullabies and croon them to sleep. I then usually spend some time with my wife before she heads off pretty early to bed (a newborn baby will do that to you!) I then usually read or obsess about Afrihost or sometimes watch some delightfully brain numbing TV. And boom. Repeat!

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Why is it that Afrihost does not have a national contact number for their customer care line?

Good question. Our aim is to provide systems that enable our clients to do everything they need to (if they wish to) without needing to telephonically contact us. And if they do need to talk to us, but don't want to phone us themselves, then we have a number they can SMS and we will do our utmost to phone them back in one hour.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

If I have a VPS hosted with you guys. How do you actually monitor my bandwidth ? Do you discard local broadcast/multi cast traffic between virtual machines?

To be honest I don't know. I have just emailed one of our team and will come back and edit this answer when I find out.

Edit: Yes we do discard local broadcast/multi cast traffic between virtual machines.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Afrihost's Achilles Heel is support. I have wanted to leave so many times because of inept support, particularly with ADSL.

How are you going to fix it?

How's it going Warwick? Hope you've been well! I’m really sorry you've experienced poor service and wanted to leave. I think we offer great support 99% of the cases - but even 1% still means that too many clients are experiencing less than what we’d like them to. We’re focusing on improved training, mentorship and life-long learning within the company to incentivise our team. We‘re also working on more automation and systems that will allow clients to self-manage and give our team the freedom to offer our clients more of their time for critical service issues. This is a priority for us, everything about our brand and philosophy is around service, so we want to make sure every Afrihost client has that experience. Sorry again that we have let you down in the past. And thanks for sticking with us so far.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

With the fast growing of Afrihost and all the new data pricing, what will the next step be for the mobile data users as they also form a great whole in the business?

We're focusing on getting every aspect of our mobile data service right. There are some things in our control that we can still improve. We also have some other plans to simplify the service that we believe will make our clients lives better and in some cases save them some money too. I would also absolutely love to offer even better value on our mobile packages. Unfortunately our direct input costs for mobile data have not changed for a long time. In fact our overall costs to deliver the service - when you include other fixed running costs such as salaries and rent etc - have in fact increased a fair whack. And the price we pay per GB is still actually more than the price per GB we charge our clients. Now I understand that none of this is your really your concern but I just wanted to explain why we are unable to easily decrease our mobile data costs for the short to medium term.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Do you ever regret getting "into bed" with MTN.

I sincerely believe that given all the factors and variables in place when we made the decision, that it was the right way forward for Afrihost. Have there been challenges and bumps in the road? Absolutely. But this does not make me regret the decision we took.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

I have a VPS in the states. I get the best service 24/7 and even with the ZAR as bad as it is. its still cheaper than any local VPS products. Why should I move to you?

Local is lekker! ;-)

The main difference is that our VPS solutions are hosted locally in South Africa. And if speed for yourself or other SA visitors to your site is important for you then this is a consideration to keep in mind. Obviously the local support and service aspect is a huge bonus for hosting locally too. And you can even visit us or the server your VPS is hosted on in person and give it a high five if you wish.

As an aside South Africa is not far behind and we’ll get there. Top industry leaders like Teraco are improving their infrastructure and with more facilities and options comes better pricing. You may have seen them in the news recently about building the largest data centre in the continent (http://techfinancials.co.za/2016/02/29/teraco-developing-africas-biggest-data-centre/#.Vt_5a8ehUyF) This is a great signal to the industry that we can compete with overseas companies.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Did you need to consult with MTN first, before agreeing to do this AMA?

Nope, I did not consult with MTN before agreeing to do this.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

How much coffee does Afrihost consume in a day?

That's a great question. I don't know the answer to that but I'm going to find out. My unscientific answer is: A lot.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Do you switch off when you get home?

I think the fact that I'm still sitting up posting answers answers this question ;-)

Seriously though, I do try to switch off for a while when I get home so that I can spend some good, quality time with my wife and kiddos. Don't always get that right though!

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Hey Everybody.

So it's 01h34 and I'm going to call it a night. I'm afraid I'm not even close to getting through all the questions.

I did some quick (and rough) maths: I was asked about 390 questions before I started answering at about 11h30 earlier today (yesterday). I have spent a total of approximately 9 hours answering questions so far, and I have answered about 94 or so in total. This means my average time to answer a question is roughly 5.7 minutes. I have about 296 questions to go. This means I have another 28 or so of focused answering hours left before I get through them all! Dang! I vastly underestimated both the quantity of questions and the time it would take to answer each one. But I have been enjoying the process and am very glad that we are doing this.


So obviously I'm still going to be taking a while longer to answer all your questions! I sincerely hope that you don't mind waiting to hear my answers. I have a rather full schedule in general, but I will do my best to carve out some time to answer questions each day. Not sure how much longer this will take so I thank you in advance for your patience!

MickeyD / RPM please can you close the thread again and I'll PM you when I can start adding answers again.

 

[MickeyD]

Done, thanks Gian.

 

[MickeyD]

Mod note: Thread re-opened for Gian's replies. Please do NOT post more questions or follow-up comments yet.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Hi Gian

how do you think Afrihost can better support IT infrastructure and development within rural schools?

I answered a similar question earlier. Going to copy it hear:


I think affordable mobile solutions are the answer to getting the rural areas connected. The technology is there to achieve this (assuming there is cellular coverage in the area). However, mobile data is still relatively expensive to provide, and we are in effect reselling the mobile co's data. I think the spectrum issue could help solve this, if a condition of the new spectrum allocation is that the mobile co's taking it over need to provide truly affordable connectivity for the rural poor. And I think they would jump at this if it meant they could unlock more spectrum.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

What made you take the risk to start your own company? (emphasize on your background growing up and people who influenced you or assisted you in reaching your goals)

To be honest it was relatively risk free for me when we started. I was not married at the time. Had no kids. No house. And I definitely had no money. I was still staying at home. So I can’t pretend I was one of those heroic entrepreneurs who left his job when he had a family and a heavily bonded home and risked everything (I have a massive, massive amount of respect for these heroes).

I often wonder if I could leave a stable job and start a company now that I have a family, a house and all the trappings of adulthood. It would be a much, much tougher decision. I think I may do it anyway but that’s very easy to write sitting on the couch here sipping my coffee.

My Dad was a cop for 27 years and my Mom was a part-time bookkeeper. Early on in my life I knew I wanted to do something on my own. I used to 'rent' novels I had (mainly in the fantasy genre) to my classmates - R2 a book. I looked after people's pets while they were away on holiday. I taught extra-maths lessons and had some other fellow students that I used to 'manage', and get them lessons and take a cut of their hourly fee. And I got a bursary for an Actuarial Science degree and had to do some vacation work at a big insurance co. For 8 weeks. And did I say it was during my holiday? And that sealed the deal for me. I just couldn't see myself in a corporate job at that time. And so the journey began to find something that I would be passionate about and love doing.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

What (about Afrihost) keeps you awake at night?

Everything! How's our team doing. Are they coping? The joy levels of our clients. Are our products performing? What is going wrong? And how to fix it. What could go wrong? What could we do better? Why are we sucking in certain areas. How is the dev for our new launches going? How are we going to launch? The emails I have to write to communicate certain things to our clients. To our team. The meetings I'm having tomorrow and what I'm going to say. The bagazillions of emails I haven't yet got around to replying to. The whatsapps and SMS's that are still languishing as unread and unreplied to on my phone. The many, many, many (ever increasing) invoices and expenses. And I could go on and on but I'd like to get through all these questions at some point!

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

How would you go about choosing your successor ?

Great question. I think that I could leave Afrihost tomorrow and that it would carry on doing brilliantly (probably even better!) without me. There are so, so many quality people there, and I have such great partners that all lead the company together with me, that I feel like I don't need a successor. We run Afrihost as a team. People may know my name more than those of the others on the Afrihost team, but they all do as much (and more) than me to run Afrihost.

 

[Afrihost-Gian]

Will you consider "going back to the floor" to experience your company as your ground staff and customers do?

Absolutely. I love the TV show 'Undercover Boss' and I would definitely do it. The only problem is that I would be so, so bad at support that clients would run away screaming!