24 years of buantel.com: from FreeBSD in the bedroom to SaaS in production
The story behind the news archive above — hosting on a 3Meg DSL line, rescuing Sun hardware, the 18-year hiatus, and why the site is back.
Read the post →IT/AI Consulting · Ontario, Canada · est. 2001
Buantel
Infrastructure that stays out of your way.
We migrate servers, harden networks, and move companies to the cloud — then build the software that keeps it all running. One accountable partner from the server room to production SaaS.
- Years in IT
- 25+
- Products in development
- 12
- Hypervisors supported
- 7
- Response, not ticket maze
- Direct
Services
What we handle
From the server room to the cloud — planning, migration, and day-to-day reliability for small and mid-size businesses.
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Server & cloud migration
Windows, Unix, virtualization, and cloud cutovers with a clear rollback plan — scoped, rehearsed, and executed on a scheduled window.
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Networking
Cisco, Meraki, Ubiquiti — design, install, and keep the pipes healthy, from a single office to multi-site VPN and SD-WAN.
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Identity & messaging
Active Directory, Entra ID, Exchange, and the glue that keeps people signed in and mail flowing — including hybrid and migration projects.
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Storage & recovery
SAN/NAS sizing, backups that actually restore, and disaster recovery plans you can rehearse — with real RTO/RPO targets, not guesses.
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Virtualization & VDI
ESXi, Hyper-V, Xen, XCP-ng, Proxmox, AWS WorkSpaces, Windows 365 Cloud PC, and desktop infrastructure when the office needs to flex.
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Security & hardening
Endpoint protection rollouts, privilege management, edge filtering, and practical security reviews mapped to how you actually work.
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Tooling & product builds with AI
Design and ship internal tools and product platforms with AI in the loop — from copilots and automation to full SaaS builds like the ones below.
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IT research & advisory
Vendor evaluations, license and renewal strategy, and second opinions before you sign — grounded in hands-on testing, not analyst decks.
How we work
Four steps, no surprises
Every engagement follows the same discipline, whether it's a weekend cutover or a six-month platform build.
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01
Assess
We inventory what you actually run — hardware, licenses, dependencies, and the undocumented things everyone forgot about.
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02
Plan
You get a written plan with sequence, risk, rollback, and a fixed window — reviewed together before anything moves.
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03
Execute
We own the cutover end to end and stay on until it's verified — not until the clock runs out.
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04
Document & hand off
Runbooks, credentials, diagrams, and a walkthrough. Your environment shouldn't depend on our memory.
Engagement models
Project
Fixed scope, fixed window — migrations, rollouts, and builds.
Retainer
Ongoing hours each month for maintenance, patching, and advice.
Advisory
Second opinions, vendor selection, and architecture reviews.
Specialties
Platforms we run daily
Twenty-five years of hands-on operation across virtualization, cloud, identity, security, compliance, and the AI stack — implemented, tuned, and kept in production.
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Virtualization & EUC
Broadcom / VMware VCF, Nutanix, Hyper-V, XCP-ng, Proxmox, Citrix, AWS WorkSpaces, Windows 365 Cloud PC
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Hybrid & multi-cloud
AWS, Azure, GCP, Microsoft 365 / Office 365, colocation data centers
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Identity & access
Active Directory, Entra ID, SSO/MFA enforcement, RBAC, identity governance, PKI (AD-integrated and DigiCert)
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Networking
Cisco, Meraki SD-WAN, Ubiquiti
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Backup & disaster recovery
Commvault, DR/BCP planning, rehearsed restores with real RTO/RPO targets
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Endpoint security & XDR/MDR
CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Sophos XDR/MDR, Microsoft Defender, LimaCharlie
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Detection & response
Vectra AI, Splunk, Nessus, Nudge Security — threat hunting, incident response, and full ransomware recovery experience
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Privilege & elevation
CyberArk EPM, BeyondTrust EPM, AdminByRequest — zero-trust and zero-standing-privilege design
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Compliance & governance
SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, SOX, HIPAA, GDPR, ITIL — CyberVadis Gold (2025), Silver (2023, 2024)
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ITSM & service management
Jira, Jira Service Management (99% SLA), ServiceNow, Atlassian suite, Jira automation
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RMM & patch management
NinjaRMM, Action1, Atera
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Remote support
TeamViewer, Rescue
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AI platforms & models
Grok / xAI, Claude, OpenAI, Hugging Face, Gemini, RunPod, LocalLLM, LM Studio, local Llama — plus AI governance for enterprise adoption
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Cloud & app platforms
Railway, Neon, Upstash, Vercel, Resend
Products
Software we build
The same discipline we bring to infrastructure, applied to product — compliance, VM operations, privileged access, and collaboration platforms.
Flagship · Live in beta
CompxOne
Compliance management without the SaaS lock-in. Multi-tenant platform for SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and PCI DSS v4 — own your evidence, map controls once across frameworks, automate collection, and ship auditor-ready exports. Includes public Trust Center pages so prospects can self-serve your compliance posture.
Try the beta- SOC 2 · ISO 27001 · HIPAA · PCI DSS v4
- Cross-framework control mapping
- Automated evidence collection
- Auditor portal & exports
- Public Trust Center pages
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univmcon In development
Unified VM management across XCP-ng, Proxmox, VMware, and Hyper-V — inventory, power ops, snapshots, migration, and embedded console from one pane of glass, direct or via an outbound-only on-site agent.
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Superauth In development
Modern privileged access management with zero standing privileges and just-in-time access — vault, session recording, and hybrid SaaS plus customer-hosted gateways without legacy PAM baggage.
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AutoCertX In development
Automated certificate lifecycle management — ACME issuance, DNS-01 validation, and multi-platform deployment adapters for IIS, Apache, and beyond.
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VMware Stakeholder SaaS In development
Assign owners and contacts to vCenters, clusters, hosts, datastores, networks, and VMs — with a stakeholder portal for discovery questions, notes, and feedback.
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Vizitaly In development
Faster, simpler alternative to the Atlassian suite — tracks, docs, service desk, access controls, and ambient AI in one platform.
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RecorderXOne Private beta
Private AI notepad and encrypted conversation vault. Capture meetings (mic + system audio), live transcript, structured notes and action items — with encrypted audio kept in your vault.
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BrainxOne In development
Self-hosted bookmark PKMS with a 3D neural graph, semantic linking, voice-friendly search, and workspace isolation — your knowledge map, running on your stack.
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LinkxOne In development
Private equity operating network for portfolio leaders, operating partners, and vetted experts — expertise discovery, forums, and cross-company initiatives without a public social feed.
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JobsxOne In development
Professional network built around verified identity, useful discovery, respectful outreach, and high-signal communities — hiring and reputation without the LinkedIn noise.
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FriendXOne In development
Privacy-first social platform with end-to-end encryption, user-owned data, and DAO-style governance — no ads, no tracking, no compromise on ownership.
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btcollect In development
Collection management for games, movies, and books — track ownership, ratings, and reviews, with mobile cover/barcode scanning and social discovery.
Open Source
Public projects
Twenty-five years of shipping, in public — early Visual Studio work from ~2000 through modern web rewrites, all on GitHub.
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TaskFlow
Full-stack task manager with JWT auth, kanban boards, list and calendar views, and filtering.
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bookkeeper-web
SaaS reimagining of the original bookkeeper app for the modern web.
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jpaint-web
Web reimplementation of the original jpaint project.
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bookkeeper
Original electronic bookkeeper written in Visual Studio.
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jpaint
Classic paint app built in Visual C++ with MFC.
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forum2000
Visual Basic forum software written in 2000.
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helpdesk
Help desk application built in Visual Studio circa 2000.
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VCHelper
Visual C++ helper program from George Brown College, circa 2000.
News
Company news
Announcements from Buantel — including the original news feed recovered from our 2002–2004 website, courtesy of the Internet Archive.
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July 9, 2026
buantel.com relaunched
A complete rebuild of our website — now covering consulting services, the product lineup led by CompxOne, open-source projects, and this news archive spanning 24 years.
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April 25, 2022
Website restored
After an 18-year hiatus we are building our website back up! :) Yahoo
From the archives: 2002–2004 (recovered via the Wayback Machine)
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March 12, 2004
1and1.com server ordered
We have added a 1and1.com server to our roster. This will host all our webhosting clients.
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March 12, 2004
MailScanner with McAfee + SpamAssassin installed
Our clients will now have anti-virus and anti-spam protection at the server level.
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March 11, 2004
FrontPage and secure SMTP installed
Our clients will now have access to UNIX FrontPage and secure relaying through our SMTP server.
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March 10, 2004
Server transition completed
We have transitioned to the new domain. Ensim is no longer in use.
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March 1, 2004
Moved to managed.com
We have ordered the new and improved dedicated server from managed.com.
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July 20, 2003
New website design up and running
We redesigned our website to simplify and improve our site.
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July 15, 2003
Urchin web analytics software
We have purchased Urchin web analytics software to analyze all of the domains and sites hosted on buantel.com's servers.
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July 11, 2003
New dedicated webserver at Rackshack.net
We have added another server at rackshack.net's datacenter. Our main website is now located at the new server for faster and much better bandwidth.
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April 20, 2003
Sun Ultra 2 Enterprise up and running
Our Sun Ultra 2 Enterprise with 2 × 300MHz UltraSPARC, 300+MB RAM, 18GB HD, Solaris 9 is running as a Solaris / Apache / PHP / Perl hosting server and secondary DNS at athena.buantel.com.
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February 18, 2003
Sun Ultra 30 up and running
Our Sun Ultra 30 with 300MHz UltraSPARC, 256MB RAM, 60GB HD, Solaris 9 is running as a hosting server and secondary DNS at sunspot.buantel.com.
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January 20, 2003
5 IPs now online
Our 5-IP block is now online at 64.56.232.98–102.
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January 18, 2003
5 more IPs ordered
We will be putting 5 more servers on the Internet: an IIS/ASP server, a Sun Ultra 30 Solaris 9 server, a full-time backup server, and a separate gateway.
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December 26, 2002
Holidays server upgrade
We purchased a Dell PowerEdge 2300 (dual PIII 450, 512MB RAM) plus a PowerEdge 4300 (dual PII 450 Xeons, 1GB RAM, 108GB RAID-5) for Windows 2000 IIS and ASP. At Buantel, Inc. we are serious about your DATA!
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December 1, 2002
Webhosting news
Setup fee waived for all webhosting accounts from Dec 01 2002 to Jan 10 2003.
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November 3, 2002
Buantel's open for business
We are now accepting web hosting accounts on our FreeBSD hosting machine — with anti-virus and anti-spam filtering on our sendmail server. No virus and less spam for you!
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October 28, 2002
3Meg DSL installed
We moved from cable to a 3Meg DSL connection — more bandwidth per month and the ability to host dedicated servers for our clients.
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October 3, 2002
Servers moved in-house
All our servers are now running in-house, which means quicker response in the event of hardware failure.
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July 18, 2002
Buantel, Inc.
Buantel, Inc. is proud to announce that we are now incorporated.
Blog
Notes from the trenches
Longer-form writing on infrastructure, migrations, and building products as a one-person shop.
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July 9, 2026
About
Built for the long haul
Buantel was founded by Rodito Buan in 2001 as a computer integrator and reseller — building and supplying systems, then hosting them on FreeBSD and Solaris boxes in colocation. Over the years the business evolved with the industry: from hardware and hosting into the consulting practice it is today, focused on migrations, infrastructure, security, and keeping production systems boringly reliable.
Based in Bradford, Ontario. We work with businesses that want a partner who will pick up the phone, own the cutover, and leave documentation behind — not a ticket queue with an SLA excuse.
The same hands that rack the servers write the software: everything in the Products section above is designed, built, and operated in-house.
- Owner / Operator
- Rodito Buan
- Founded
- 2001
- Based in
- Bradford, ON
- Focus
- IT/AI Consulting & products
Contact
Let's talk infrastructure
Tell us what you're migrating, fixing, or standing up. Include roughly how many servers, sites, or users are involved and any deadline you're working against — we'll reply with concrete next steps, not a qualification call.
- Direct reply from the person doing the work
- Written scope and plan before anything moves
- Fixed windows, rollback plans, documentation
- Ontario on-site · Canada on-request
- North America remote · worldwide by request