About VIRTBIZ

You’re here because you want to know more about VIRTBIZ, right?  You’ve come to the right place.

Our Name:

Our first home.

OK, we admit it. We have a strange name. In the beginning, we were called Virtual Business Solutions. But it took too long to answer the phone. We tried to abbreviate the name into the initials VBS, but then we were too easily confused with “vacation bible school” and got the wrong kinds of phone calls. Our solution was to combine two words that are somewhat bulky and cumbersome (Virtual + Business) into one neat little fun to say package. VIRTBIZ! (See, that was fun, wasn’t it?)

What we do:

We offer Internet services such as web design & development, virtual– & dedicated-server hosting, and collocation from our Dallas datacenter. Our industry-leading low prices and absolute dedication to superior service should make us your first choice to satisfy your Internet needs. We will always provide you with better service, and usually do it for less money than our competition. How can you beat that?

Some very high-profile customers call us “home” for their Internet services. We hope that you will consider calling on us for your needs, as well!

Our People:

We’re extremely proud of our staff. We are 100% USA-based, with the majority of our staff on-site at our 10,000 square-foot Dallas facility. When you call our business office, the phone will be answered by a real-live human being during each and every one of our business hours – not a voicemail system designed to keep you as far away from a person as possible.

Our staff of experts and certified professionals can help build and design your website, find the right dedicated server for your project, or create a customized collocation package.. Ala carte or turn-key – we’ve got the experience, knowledge, and equipment to not just satisfy, but delight our clientèle!

Our History:

We have been providing consulting and management services to businesses and individuals since 1978. In the early 1990’s, we began receiving requests to apply the same personalized service with reasonable & affordable pricing to Internet services.

Our logo from 1997
Our logo from 1997

After relying on outsourcing to other service providers and encountering continued disappointment, we decided to invest in the necessary equipment and tools to bring the service in-house in 1996. Since then, we have steadily built on our client base, mostly through word-of-mouth and referral.

We started off as a tiny operation set up in a spare room at INTEX Management Company’s location in Plano, Texas.  With a single Pentium Pro 200Mhz server running Windows NT4.0, we began serving websites and email from our 128Kbps ISDN line.

Our logo from 2001
Our logo from 2001

On October 1, 2001 VIRTBIZ went live from our new headquarters on Gold Street in Garland, Texas.  By this time we had grown up to 6 servers.  The old P-Pro server had been replaced by a shiny new HP NetServer LH3, complete with 5 (count ’em!) 9GB SCSI drives.  We also introduced our first Linux-based system into the network; a Cobalt RaQ2.  Soon our 1.54Mbps T1 line began to groan under the load, and it was clear we needed to look for a different solution to our bandwidth problem.

Our logo from 2003.

In 2003 we took the step of leasing space in an actual datacenter.  We moved 1 rack of servers out to 1902 Central Drive in Bedford, Texas and connected the office to the datacenter via private T1.

VIRTBIZ President Chris Gebhardt (R) with Kam Ghassemieh (L) and Jimmy Chiles of Aspen Communications
VIRTBIZ President Chris Gebhardt (R) with Kam Ghassemieh (L) and Jimmy Chiles (C) of Aspen Communications in 2005.

By mid-2005 we had fully occupied 2 racks in that facility and were consuming up to 8Mbps of traffic during peak usage.   We were then informed that due to a change in business requirements our colocation datacenter would be closing its doors.  There would be less than 3 weeks to locate replacement facilities and make a full migration.

Our logo from 2006

We made arrangements with the failed provider to allow VIRTBIZ to make contact with the other tenants who would soon find themselves without a datacenter.  Working with other colleagues in the industry, we were able to secure service for our own equipment as well as the other customers through Aspen Communications.  This was to be the start of an enduring friendship between VIRTBIZ and the management team at Telecommunications Properties, Inc.  VIRTBIZ officially entered the colocation business when we signed a lease for cage space in Downtown Dallas’ tallest datacenter at 901 Main Street.  We quickly installed 6 racks and ferried servers and equipment to our new home over the course of the next 2 weeks  by car.

Shortly after moving in, we began to take in new colocation customers as well as set up dedicated servers in our space.  We quickly spilled over into 5 more racks and 2 shelves worth of tower servers.   We looked for additional space and found it with ColoMart at 2323 Bryan Street in Dallas.  At that point, our offices were in Garland and we had two datacenters in Dallas and we knew that we really wanted to somehow consolidate operations.

In 2007, two very pivotal things occurred.  The principals of ColoMart made a decision that they would focus on other business opportunities and essentially move out of the datacenter business.  Also, in July of 2007, VIRTBIZ closed on a property that would become its new headquarters and datacenter at 2805 Canton Street in Dallas.  The next several weeks and months were spent renovating our newly-acquired 10,000 square-foot mid-century building and making it ready for customers to occupy the datacenter.   The first customers moved in from ColoMart in November of 2007.  By mid-2008 we moved our last production servers out of our 901 Main Street.

In 2021 we sold the Canton Street property and began moving operations to a newly-acquired 30,000 square-foot building about 20 miles north in Plano. 2000 NCX was commissioned in the fall of 2021 and the last systems were removed from Canton Street in December, 2021.

The move also allowed us to refocus on our core strengths and the services that we felt we are strongest at. This resulted in restructuring our datacenter footprint to better align with denser, application-rich cloud services while eliminating some of the inefficiencies inherent in retail colocation design from the early 2000’s.

Our Facilities:

datacenter in Plano
VIRTBIZ Headquarters in Dallas, TX

Our business office and network operations center are located in Plano, TX. From here we monitor and manage all aspects of our network and operations. Filtered, dedicated AC power service from multiple, diverse utility feeds is backed up by redundant UPS battery backup and diesel generator with automatic transfer.

With access to connection points at Dallas’ premier carrier hotels we provide our customers with access to one of the largest, most geographically-diverse metro fiber footprints in Dallas. We have abundant dark-fiber available for future expansion, or for lease to customers requiring dedicated fiber connectivity. In addition, our exclusive microwave fail over system utilizes the same technology that major telephone carriers use to ensure connectivity even when all physical lines are cut. This is a VIRTBIZ exclusive not available from any other Dallas-area provider.

In addition, we provide services at two remote Points of Presence (POPs); our old home DTX901 and our Tennessee location MEM1.

If you’d like to know more about VIRTBIZ facilities, we’d love to tell you!