Building cloud infrastructure is one thing. Keeping everything around it, including billing, provisioning, support, running smoothly as you grow is another challenge entirely. It’s not the kind of work that gets noticed – unless it’s missing.
Sharktech, a hosting and cloud company with roots going back to 2003, has been there. And like many providers expanding into OpenStack-based services, they realized the real slowdown wasn’t in the infrastructure. It was in how to make it all manageable at scale.
As an organization actively supporting the OpenInfra Foundation, we jumped at the chance to connect with CEO Tim Timrawi – not just to learn how Sharktech solved that challenge, but also to see how our OpenStack Projects For WHMCS fit into the solution, and why bringing in the right kind of help at the right time made all the difference.
Staying Secure, Growing Smart
That early focus on DDoS-protected solutions laid the groundwork for what Sharktech is now: a provider of bare metal and OpenStack cloud services, with data centers around the world and over 1000 clients in 73 countries.
Recently, we’ve been expanding our services to include more customizable infrastructure solutions and better automation around billing and customer provisioning – areas where efficiency and scalability are key to our continued growth.
Moving from standardized products to more flexible, tailored solutions is a shift many providers can relate to, this and needing backend systems that don’t collapse under the pressure.
When Growth Exposes Friction
The more custom your services get, the harder it is to make standard tools keep up.
As our client base grew, managing the complexity of service provisioning, billing, and client communication manually or through limited tooling became increasingly unsustainable.
WHMCS worked to a point, but there’s only so far you can push it without bumping up against what it can’t do.
We needed better integration between our internal systems and WHMCS, as well as automation that was reliable, secure, and scalable. The lack of flexibility in off-the-shelf modules slowed us down.
Rather than stacking on new features, the focus was on getting the core operations to scale properly. Because when you’re dealing with large infrastructure, even small inefficiencies multiply fast.
Why Asking Early Beats Fixing Late
Just like plenty of others in the industry, Sharktech started asking around. Who’s good with WHMCS? Who can actually build custom solutions that don’t fall apart?
ModulesGarden kept coming up as a top name in the WHMCS community whenever we asked around for trusted developers and custom solution providers. Their reputation for deep WHMCS expertise and tailored development made them stand out.
We still remember when we first started working with Sharktech. That collaboration meant a lot, because we didn’t just want them to see our technical skills. We hoped they’d also see that we really understand the hosting world, with its quirks, pressure points, and the constant demand for speed and stability. And they did.
We reached out, and from the first consultation, it was clear they understood the hosting industry inside and out – not just the technical side, but also the business processes we needed to optimize. That made the decision easy.
Good Systems Make Happy Teams (and Clients)
Automation is a big part of the picture, but what matters just as much in ongoing work is knowing where your team’s time is actually being wasted.
The custom modules and integrations we’ve developed with ModulesGarden have drastically reduced manual input and errors. Provisioning, billing cycles, client account management – everything runs smoother now.
Support teams could shift focus from backend issues to real customer interaction. Less time fixing, more time actually helping. And how did that look for clients?
From the customer’s perspective, it’s meant faster setups, clearer communication, and a more professional experience overall.
But the improvements weren’t just seen in the infrastructure or the customer experience. The internal response said it all.
Internally, our team appreciated the clarity and time savings almost immediately. Fewer headaches with billing, fewer tickets about provisioning delays – that’s a win across the board.
From the teams working behind the scenes to end users, who often don’t notice much until something breaks – the results were genuinely felt.
Clients have commented on how streamlined things feel now, especially during onboarding. It’s not flashy, but it’s noticeable – things just work better.
Progress doesn’t always make noise. Sometimes, it shows up as fewer questions, fewer tickets, and a system that simply does its job. That’s what Sharktech built – the kind of operational calm that makes scaling feel less like effort, and more like natural flow.
For Anyone Still Stuck in Manual Mode
So what’s Tim’s advice for other companies who might be facing similar issues?
The key advice we’d give others is this: don’t wait until inefficiencies pile up to seek help. If you rely on WHMCS but your services don’t fit neatly into its default framework, investing in custom solutions can pay off quickly.
It’s the kind of lesson that tends to come after things have already slowed down – but it doesn’t have to. The earlier you tackle the friction points, the more room you leave for actual growth. Sharktech made that call early, and it’s clear they’ve benefited from it ever since.
Having a partner like ModulesGarden – who knows the hosting world and can work closely with your tech team – makes all the difference.
Huge thanks to Tim Timrawi and the entire Sharktech team for keeping it real and showing that scaling OpenStack-based infrastructure doesn’t have to come at the cost of your sanity. We’re proud to have played a part in that, and we’re looking forward to seeing where Sharktech goes next.
What did we learn? That success in cloud and hosting is essentially about building smart, staying agile, and investing in the parts of your equipment that customers never see but always feel. Something to think about, especially if you’re in the middle of scaling and things already feel “good enough”.
And if you’re building on OpenStack too, OpenStack Projects For WHMCS is a smart place to start exploring what could be running better in the background.
Powering OpenStack growth with custom WHMCS automation - Sharktech Case Study,
