From a self-taught teenager on an Amstrad CPC6128 to running production systems for half a million customers — this is not a consulting pitch built on certifications. It is a career built on uptime, hard decisions, and bootstrapped growth.
First line of code on an Amstrad CPC6128. Self-taught through the entire 1990s.
Managing ops for 500,000 customers across 40 Linux servers, leading a team of seven.
Co-founded Jexiste.fr — 4,000 customers, 80 servers, built from the ground up.
Renamed it ISVTEC, acquired my co-founder's shares, pivoted to managed services while keeping hosting
Still running ISVTEC — bootstrapped, ISO 27001 certified, AWS and Scaleway partner.
Along the way: an official Debian developer who maintained DRBD high-availability packages for a decade, and co-founder of a technology-led restaurant group that scaled to six locations before a successful exit.
Every senior engineer carries scars. The question is whether you pay for theirs or benefit from them. The expensive mistakes — wrong architecture choices, vendor lock-in, scaling too early, cutting corners on security — have already been made. On my own money. On other people's money. So you don't have to repeat them.
Twenty-plus years of real production decisions, not theoretical frameworks. You get the conclusions without sitting through the lessons.
ISVTEC has never taken outside capital. Every recommendation is weighed against real-world cost and operational reality — not investor timelines.
I still run infrastructure today. The advice is current because the work is current. No gap between what I recommend and what I actually do.
Certifications matter less than track record. Here is what backs the work.
Official partner status with two major cloud providers, enabling direct access to technical resources, support tiers, and architectural guidance not available to the general public.
ISVTEC holds ISO 27001 certification — the international standard for information security management. Not a checkbox, but an operational discipline embedded into daily practice.
Contributed directly to one of the most widely deployed Linux distributions in the world. Maintained the DRBD high-availability packages for ten years — critical infrastructure used by thousands of production systems globally.
Co-founded and scaled a technology-led restaurant group to six locations, then executed a successful sale. Infrastructure thinking applied beyond the server room — into operations, teams, and growth.
Running live infrastructure since 2003
Built from scratch at Jexiste.fr
Managed at peak operations
Core Debian HA package maintainer
No pitch decks, no discovery calls designed to sell you a retainer. Tell me your situation honestly — what you're running, what's keeping you up at night, what you've already tried. I'll tell you directly whether I can help, and if I can't, I'll tell you that too.
© 2026 Cyril Bouthors. All rights reserved.
Two Decades of Infrastructure, Built from Scratch