SuccessInc

Origins (1987) · context: History of the Internet

SuccessInc originated in 1987 in Dokken's frustration with the electronic bulletin-board systems of the period, which presented themselves as knowledge networks but were, in practice, largely text games.^[2][19] Having moved faster than his secondary-school curriculum and doubtful that formal education offered quicker access to real knowledge, he set out to build a system that could operate over UUNET — which in 1987 became the first commercial internet service of its kind — and exchange genuine information rather than entertainment.^[2][21] The work was self-funded, without investors, grants or institutional backing.^[2]

The gateway: how it was built (1987–1988) · context: Server (computing)

The build took close to a year.^[3] A mainframe Dokken could access had no external network connection, so he turned to microprocessors. He acquired an early IBM micro-processor system — closed, uncustomizable and driven by simple DOS commands — and traded it for a newer IBM machine whose bus could support multiple concurrent processes. Storage ran on pin-based hard drives, making each read and write slow and mechanical.^[3]

Dokken customized the machine to drive two modems simultaneously — a configuration not then sold as a product — feeding a single shared database kept in synchronization across both connections.^[3] The operating environment was built on Minix, among the first open-source Unix-style operating systems that would run on the IBM architecture and permit deep customization.^[3][25] A text-based user-and-account store let a person authenticate once and reach multiple accounts — an early implementation of what is now called single sign-on.^[3][32]

The result was the Application Gateway: a server, a repository, a shared data store and a dual-network connection — a client–server delivery layer on which applications could be hosted centrally and reached remotely.^[3][34]

The AppNet platform · context: Application service provider

On top of the gateway Dokken built AppNet, a framework for delivering applications as a service over a network.^[4] Applications ran centrally, so updates and new features were managed in one place and made available to every connected user at once — an early form of multi-tenant delivery.^[4][36] A user authenticated a single time and then reached the applications relevant to their context. AppNet was organized around industry verticals — among them employment, insurance, community and data — with a repository, themes, account management, a shared data store and an integrated community layer as its components, all reached on a subscription basis through what would later be recognized as a web-application model.^[4][39] This central-hosting, multi-tenant, subscription design is the pattern the industry later named the ASP approach and, later still, software-as-a-service.^[14][16]

Applications · context: Application software

Online employment recruitment (1988)

The first application built on AppNet was an online employment-recruitment system: employers posted positions and candidates applied, reaching the service over the network through the gateway without installing software locally.^[5][40] Recruitment was chosen because it exercised the full architecture — authentication, account management, persistent structured data, network delivery and concurrent users — and because it matched people to work faster than paper-based processes. The project drew early resistance: network-delivered applications were seen by some as a threat to the brokers, agents and distribution layers of established industries such as insurance.^[5][3]

Community (1994)

In 1994 a community component was added to AppNet — the bulletin-board concept rebuilt inside the platform, not as a standalone network but as an in-application layer for questions, shared knowledge and context.^[6] It functioned as an early in-application online community and knowledge base, closing the loop on the frustration that had started SuccessInc seven years earlier: knowledge sat as a layer on top of a working application rather than being the whole product.^[6]

Security research (1994) · context: Transport Layer Security

Alongside the community work, SuccessInc was grappling with how to secure its users' data as it moved over the network — a hard problem in the early-to-mid 1990s, before the web had standard security protocols. Netscape's Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), the first widely adopted web-security protocol, appeared only in 1994–1995.^[23][24] Dokken's research into network and data security in this period surfaced how exposed many publicly accessible systems then were — a finding that fed directly into the consumer-protection aims of his next venture, Assured Card.^[6]

How these technologies were used in the development of the internet and applications · context: History of the World Wide Web

The patterns SuccessInc implemented between 1987 and 1994 each became central to how the internet and its applications developed over the two decades that followed. The connection is one of lineage and anticipation — SuccessInc built these patterns early — rather than any claim that later firms used its specific code.

• Applications delivered over a network as a service. The central-hosting, multi-tenant, subscription model behind AppNet is the model the industry later named the application service provider approach,^[14] which matured into software-as-a-service and then cloud computing as later defined by NIST^[12] — built at scale by companies such as Salesforce, NetSuite and Amazon Web Services.
• Networked transactions. AppNet's handling of structured transactions across the dual-network connection — users and applications committing and exchanging data in real time — anticipated the online transaction processing (OLTP) model that underlies networked business systems today.^[17][18]
• Single login across services. The account store that let a user authenticate once and reach many accounts anticipated single sign-on and federated authentication, now foundational to how identity works across the web.^[32]
• Shared, synchronized data for many users. The single synchronized database serving concurrent users over a client–server connection is the multi-tenant data pattern that underlies cloud applications.^[36]
• Community inside the application. The 1994 in-application Q&A and knowledge base anticipated the online communities and knowledge platforms built into software products today.

Industry context and significance · context: Software industry

SuccessInc's model predated the vocabulary used to describe it. "Application service provider" entered mainstream industry use only in the late 1990s,^[14] and "software as a service" and "cloud computing" later still.^[12][13] The claim to have built the first platform of its kind is the company's own; what is independently documented is early activity in the model: an independent biography in The Wall Street Transcript records that Dokken founded Success, Inc. and that his internet software-subscription sales of the late 1990s "presaged the ASP model," and that he was recognized, through Milinx, as a figure in the ASP industry by 2000.^[8]

Legacy · context: Cloud computing

SuccessInc is the origin point of a roughly fourteen-year arc, from 1987 to 2001, from "modems and pin drives to cloud infrastructure and patents."^[7] In summary, the platform established — early — a set of patterns the broader industry would spend the following two decades building: applications hosted centrally and delivered over a network as a service, the model later named the ASP approach and then software-as-a-service and cloud computing;^[14][12] a single shared, synchronized database serving concurrent users;^[36] single-login access across services, an early single sign-on;^[32] networked transaction handling that anticipated OLTP;^[17] an in-application community and knowledge base;^[6] and early research into securing user data before the web's security protocols existed.^[23]

Those same components carried forward through Dokken's later ventures. The gateway, account model, shared database and security work became the basis of Assured Card and its development company Assured Credit from the mid-1990s; the hosted-application framework became the business of the publicly traded Milinx Business Group, recognized by 2000 — in an independent Wall Street Transcript interview and in its SEC filings — as a leader in the ASP category the industry had by then named.^[8][9] The thread from SuccessInc to Milinx is, in short, the thread from an idea built alone on two modems to a public company operating that idea at scale.

See also

• USinternetworking
• Salesforce
• NetSuite
• Citrix Systems
• Oracle Corporation
• SAP
• Amazon Web Services
• Microsoft Azure
• Google Workspace
• Google Cloud Platform
• Workday, Inc.
• ServiceNow
• Akamai Technologies
• Zoho Corporation
• Dropbox
• Internet service provider

References

1. SuccessInc — home. successinc.net.
2. SuccessInc, "The Origin." successinc.net/about.
3. SuccessInc, "How It Was Built" (the Gateway). successinc.net/gateway.
4. SuccessInc, "The Platform" (AppNet). successinc.net/applications.
5. SuccessInc, "First App" — online employment recruitment, 1988. successinc.net/app1.
6. SuccessInc, "Community" — BBS reinvented, 1994. successinc.net/community.
7. SuccessInc, "The Journey" and "What Came Next." successinc.net/journey; successinc.net/next.
8. The Wall Street Transcript, biography of Maynard L. Dokken. twst.com/bio/maynard-l-dokken.
9. U.S. SEC EDGAR — Milinx Business Group, Inc., CIK 0001088815. sec.gov EDGAR.
10. Patent CA 2,300,347 A1, "Client-centered secure e-commerce," assignee Milinx Business Group Inc., filed 10 March 2000. patents.google.com/patent/CA2300347A1.
11. Maynard L. Dokken — official site. maynardldokken.com.

12. National Institute of Standards and Technology, The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing (SP 800-145), 2011. csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/145/final.
13. Cloud computing — Wikipedia.
14. TechTarget, "application service provider (ASP)." techtarget.com.
15. Application service provider — Wikipedia.
16. TechTarget, "software as a service (SaaS)." techtarget.com; also Software as a service on Wikipedia.
17. IBM, "What is online transactional processing (OLTP)?" ibm.com/think/topics/oltp.
18. Online transaction processing — Wikipedia.
19. Engineering and Technology History Wiki (IEEE), "Bulletin Board Systems." ethw.org/Bulletin_Board_Systems.
20. Bulletin board system — Wikipedia.
21. "Richard Adams Founds UUNET, the First Commercial ISP," HistoryofInformation.com. historyofinformation.com.
22. UUNET — Wikipedia.
23. Exabeam, "The Origins of Web Security and the Birth of the SSL Protocol." exabeam.com.
24. Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) — Wikipedia.
25. MINIX — official project site (A. S. Tanenbaum). minix3.org; also MINIX on Wikipedia.
26. IONOS Digital Guide, "UNIX — a history of the operating system." ionos.com; also Unix on Wikipedia.
27. Open Source Initiative, "The Open Source Definition." opensource.org/osd; also Open-source software on Wikipedia.
28. Encyclopaedia Britannica, "modem." britannica.com; also Modem on Wikipedia.
29. IBM, "What is a mainframe?" ibm.com; also Mainframe computer on Wikipedia.
30. Encyclopaedia Britannica, "microprocessor." britannica.com; also Microprocessor on Wikipedia.
31. Encyclopaedia Britannica, "microcomputer" (IBM PC). britannica.com; also IBM Personal Computer on Wikipedia.
32. Okta, "What is Single Sign-On (SSO)?" okta.com; also Single sign-on on Wikipedia.
33. Okta, "Authentication." okta.com; also Authentication on Wikipedia.
34. Client–server model — Wikipedia.
35. Oracle, "What Is a Database?" oracle.com; also Database on Wikipedia.
36. Multitenancy — Wikipedia.
37. Investopedia, "Vertical Market." investopedia.com; also Vertical market on Wikipedia.
38. Subscription business model — Wikipedia.
39. Web application — Wikipedia.
40. Employment website — Wikipedia.
41. Online community — Wikipedia.
42. Knowledge base — Wikipedia.
43. Encyclopaedia Britannica, "computer network." britannica.com; also Computer network on Wikipedia.
44. Internet Society, "Brief History of the Internet." internetsociety.org; also History of the Internet on Wikipedia.