Article

42 Hosting Accounts, 3.7M Database Rows: The Infrastructure Map for Multi-Country Operations

Multi-Vertical Scaling

Key Takeaways
  • When people talk about running a business in two countries, the conversation usually focuses on sales, marketing, and compliance.
  • A 2024 Flexera State of the Cloud report found that the average enterprise manages 2.6 public cloud providers and 2.7 private cloud environments, with 30% of cloud spending wasted on orphaned or underutilized resources.
  • The infrastructure works because it follows consistent patterns across both geographies.
  • Infrastructure scale is not an abstract metric.

The Setup

When people talk about running a business in two countries, the conversation usually focuses on sales, marketing, and compliance. The infrastructure question -- where the servers live, how payments process, how data is stored and maintained -- gets treated as an implementation detail that someone else handles.

For digital businesses, infrastructure is not a detail. It is the business. Every transaction, every customer record, every payment, every refund flows through infrastructure. When that infrastructure spans two countries, two currencies, and two separate server ecosystems, the operational complexity is real and measurable. This is not the kind of complexity you can outsource to a single SaaS vendor and forget about. It requires active management of dozens of hosting accounts, hundreds of thousands of transaction records, and millions of database rows.

Most businesses that operate at this scale have dedicated infrastructure teams. The assumption is that multi-country infrastructure management is a full-time job for multiple people. But the scale of the infrastructure does not automatically dictate the size of the team required to manage it -- not if the infrastructure was built with operational efficiency in mind from the start.

What the Data Shows

A 2024 Flexera State of the Cloud report found that the average enterprise manages 2.6 public cloud providers and 2.7 private cloud environments, with 30% of cloud spending wasted on orphaned or underutilized resources. IDC research shows that mid-size businesses operating across 2+ geographies spend an average of $180,000-$350,000 annually on infrastructure management -- with 40-55% of that going to coordination and monitoring rather than the infrastructure itself.

The Stealth Labz infrastructure spans two countries with the following measured footprint as of January 2026:

Metric South Africa United States Combined
Hosting accounts 22 20 42
Transaction logs 71,078 77,990 149,068
Database rows 236,561 3,462,416 3,698,977
Gross processed (native) R15,094,096 ZAR $100,066 USD ~$939K USD equiv.

42 hosting accounts means 42 distinct server configurations -- each one a production environment processing real transactions. The South African operation has higher transaction density per account (3,231 transactions per hosting account) while the US operation has significantly more database rows per account (173,121 rows per account). These different profiles reflect different operational models: the ZA operation processed more individual transactions across more campaigns, while the US operation concentrated data density into fewer, higher-volume systems.

The transaction volume reached production scale during peak months. February 2024 saw R6,660,787 in raw ZAR processing ($370,041 USD equivalent) across both geographies simultaneously. Up to 8-10 campaigns ran concurrently during peak months. 38+ campaigns were tracked across both currencies over the full operating period.

The infrastructure supports dual-currency payment processing (ZAR and USD through separate merchant accounts), data storage across both geographies (South African data on ZA servers, US data on US servers), regulatory compliance across both jurisdictions, and separate fulfillment and refund handling for each currency.

All of this is managed by a single operator: Michael George Keating. No dedicated infrastructure team. No regional technology managers. No outsourced monitoring service. One operator managing 42 hosting accounts, 149,068 transaction logs, and 3.7 million database rows across two continents.

How It Works

The infrastructure works because it follows consistent patterns across both geographies. Every hosting account is configured the same way. Every transaction is logged using the same structure. Every database follows the same schema patterns. The geography-specific differences -- currency, payment provider, compliance rules -- are handled through configuration, not through different architectures.

This means the operator is not learning and maintaining 42 different systems. The operator is maintaining one operational pattern deployed 42 times. When something needs attention on one account, the same diagnostic approach works on every other account. When a process is optimized in the US infrastructure, the same optimization applies to the ZA infrastructure.

The dual-currency processing layer runs through Konnektive CRM, which handles both ZAR and USD transactions. Each currency has its own merchant account relationships, its own settlement schedules, and its own refund processing. But the transaction tracking, campaign attribution, and reporting infrastructure is shared. The operator gets one view of the business that spans both currencies, with the ability to drill into either geography independently.

The 42 hosting accounts break down by function: some serve product front-ends, some run admin interfaces, some handle API routing, some manage content delivery. Each one is a production server that needs to stay operational. The scale -- 42 accounts across 2 continents -- is comparable to what a mid-size technology company would manage with a 3-5 person infrastructure team.

What This Means for Business Operators

Infrastructure scale is not an abstract metric. 3.7 million database rows represent 3.7 million records of real business activity -- transactions, customer interactions, campaign results, and operational data accumulated over 28 months of active processing. 149,068 transaction logs represent 149,068 individual payment events that were processed, tracked, and reconciled across two currencies.

For operators evaluating multi-country expansion, these numbers define what the operational reality looks like once you are running. It is not just a product launch -- it is ongoing infrastructure management across hosting accounts, transaction processing, database maintenance, and compliance across jurisdictions. The question is whether that operational load requires a team or whether it can be managed by one operator with the right infrastructure patterns. The Stealth Labz operation demonstrates that it can be one operator -- but only when the infrastructure is built on consistent, repeatable patterns that make 42 accounts behave like one system deployed 42 times rather than 42 separate systems requiring 42 separate approaches.


Related: How to Run Dual-Currency Business Operations Across Two Countries | How to Expand a Digital Product to a New Country in 16 Days | How One Operator Runs 7 Verticals Across 2 Countries

References

  1. Flexera (2024). "State of the Cloud Report." Cloud management benchmarks and resource utilization across enterprises.
  2. IDC. "Mid-Market Infrastructure Spending Analysis." Infrastructure management costs for multi-geography businesses.
  3. Keating, M.G. (2026). "Case Study: The Dual-Currency Processing Operation." Stealth Labz. Read case study
  4. Keating, M.G. (2026). "The Compounding Execution Method: Complete Technical Documentation." Stealth Labz. Browse papers