Cbox
Infrastructure tools, open source packages, and consulting. Run by Sylvester Damgaard from Denmark since 2000.
Cbox started before I turned 18. Originally called Combo-Box, it was an online PDA I built with my friend Joaquim — he did Flash and Photoshop, I did PHP and iframes. Address book, email, free SMS via email gateways, games. When I turned 18 a couple of years later, I registered the company, got the cbox.dk domain, and never stopped. Over twenty years it evolved through hosting, telephony, drone inspection, broadcast CMS, and cloud infrastructure into what it is today: a one-person operation focused on building tools for teams that run PHP in production.
What Cbox does
Cbox Cortex is the main product. It deploys and orchestrates Docker containers on your own servers, with service orchestration for MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, and more. Any language, with first-class PHP support. Currently in private beta.
The open source packages (13 and counting) solve specific infrastructure problems: queue autoscaling using queueing theory, system metrics collection in pure PHP, PHP-FPM monitoring for Prometheus, Docker process management, and Statamic developer tools.
On the consulting side, Cbox takes on a limited number of projects. Architecture review, Laravel and Statamic development, Kubernetes, DevOps. No agency overhead. Limited availability since the person behind Cbox also works full-time.
The person behind it
I'm Sylvester Damgaard. I started my first company at 18 and have been building things since. Developer, CTO, system architect, consultant. Sometimes all at once.
I co-founded EasyInspect and served as CTO. We built Inspection Cloud, a SaaS platform for drone-based infrastructure inspection used by SBB (Swiss Federal Railways), Vejdirektoratet, Sund og Bælt, Cowi, and Rambøll. Computer vision for damage detection in wind turbine blades, concrete structures, and bridges. I showcased the platform at UAV shows in London and Las Vegas.
At TV2 Regionerne I was Principal Architect. I built two CMS platforms (Bazo, then Statamic), contributed 200+ pull requests to Statamic core, created 40+ addons, migrated close to a million videos, and ran the Kubernetes infrastructure solo for all eight regional news sites. 90,000 requests per second on election night. I presented this story at Laravel Live DK 2024.
Before that: chief developer at Debitel where I ran GoIP, one of Denmark's largest IP telephony providers (100,000+ private customers). Co-founded MyDroneAcademy, Denmark's first approved drone school. Hosted Unity 3D's first public release when they were still at IT University Copenhagen. Built Frac.dk and Hotserv.dk, hosting platforms that grew to 100,000+ active users. And more: Cabinn Hotels (IT infrastructure), Ringsted Festival (WiFi and surveillance), Heste-Nettet (Denmark's largest horse community, e-commerce award winner 2005).
How Cbox works
It's one person. When you work with Cbox, you work with me directly. I take on projects that fit alongside my full-time role, so availability is limited but the work gets my full attention.
Outside of work, I brew craft beer. Patience, process, honest assessment of the result. Applies to both.
// Sylvester