Czech MSP vshosting~ is crossing the border to the UK

Damir Špoljarič, co-founder and CEO, talks past and future of Czech MSP as it expands into the UK market

Czech-headquartered MSP, vshosting~, has expanded its reach into the UK market with the opening of an office and datacentre in Portsmouth.

The cloud and managed hosting services provider was co-founded in 2006 by CEO Damir Špoljarič and was acquired by global cloud hosting platform for SMEs, Contabo, in 2020.

Since then, the Czech reseller has pushed its expansion even further, reaching into Germany, Hungary and now the UK.

"The UK is the biggest ecommerce market, and we think we are quite strong in terms of ecommerce services to customers with any scale, from the smallest issue up to the largest infrastructure, even global ones, and therefore we thought that our values could be more than valid even for the UK customers," Špoljarič explains about the move into the UK market.

"The second reason is that our investors have a good network in Germany and UK. So that also helps us understand market better.

"And so, I think this could make our expansion little bit easier compared to Hungary and where we are starting from scratch, for example."

But the move does not come without challenges.

He says: "The biggest challenge is, of course, that the market is well established and we will fighting against very big competitors. Also, customers tend to be a little bit more conservative, let's say, so we will have to establish ourselves."

In terms of vendor partnerships, he says that the company doesn't have exclusivity with any major vendor due to its large hardware needs. It spreads across vendors based on availability.

"None of the vendors is able to supply the amount of service we need in the group.

"Because you know, we are buying thousands of servers and because there is a lack of the chips on the market."

On the crest of a wave

Speaking about the company's success to CRN, Špoljarič said: ""In Czech Republic and Slovakia we host two thirds of all ecommerce projects, somewhere around 20,000 e-shops."

"And our biggest selling point is that we have special teams and procedure for each layer of customer infrastructure. We are going deeper than a competitor and we have great infrastructure."

The company has around 400 employees total, with around 100 in Czech Republic.

Špoljarič explains the company is now starting to hire people in the UK for sales, marketing, and eventually technical support roles.

And on the current talent market in the UK, he has a new perspective: "In terms of sales and marketing, I think it's better than we expected.

"Let's see when we extend hiring to towards operations how that goes but for now, it looks that we will have very good team and we have a team already."

He says that while in Europe - and particularly in the Czech Republic - he has always found it difficult to hire talent, the UK seems to be a place where there is plenty of talent and it is approaching the company directly, rather than having to go through hiring agencies.

"Since I launched vshosting~ nearly twenty years ago, I've always looked at the UK market as a beacon to reach, not only for its size as the largest market for ecommerce spend against others in Europe, but also for the technical innovations we see here," the CEO continues.

"We've grown rapidly across Central Europe and have clients who wanted vshosting~ to support their local needs in the UK, making now the perfect time to open a UK office and local data centre.

"We're here to champion scaling, ambitious, businesses that are looking for a long-term growth partner to support their technical needs.

"As more services migrate online and data proliferation continues, we're excited to see what the future holds and are here to support our clients through the journey."