Milinx Business Group, 1997 to 2001
The record of the application service provider that Maynard L. Dokken founded in 1997 and led until 2001: its hosted business applications, its own data center in Vancouver, its news releases and its history.
1997-2001 Milinx
Message from Maynard L. Dokken
Milinx was the result of more than ten years of work. Its name comes from Minix, the Unix-like operating system on which SuccessInc built the original ASP (SaaS) server in 1988. The AssuredCard and AssuredCredit technology was merged into Milinx. That gave Milinx a head start in hosted online payment gateways and hosted portal services (SaaS, PaaS and IaaS), which it went on to develop and operate.
While I was CEO, from 1997 to 2001, Milinx was a powerhouse of innovation and development. Its governance, finances and strategic direction were solid and successful. This site shows the company as it was while I was President and CEO. Its content on SuccessInc, AssuredCredit, AssuredCard and Milinx is taken directly from the record: archived copies of the original websites, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the company’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, its news releases, and other independent sites and documents.
Stepping down, 2001 to 2002
On August 30, 2001, on legal advice, I stepped down as President and CEO after 14 years of research, development and disruptive innovation. A new management team was approved […], and I disagreed with the direction it took. By then Milinx had passed 30,000 active users of a cutting-edge technology. The change of direction ultimately caused the collapse of the project and of the operating company, and the next stages of ASP, from SaaS to PaaS and IaaS, had to wait a few more years to appear again.
The new management asked me to stay on as Chairman to deal with corporate governance issues. On January 29, 2002, I resigned as Chairman and formed a foundation, MarkCrest, to carry my work forward and to support innovators and inventors worldwide.
Maynard L. DokkenPresident and CEO of Milinx, 1997–2001
First written in 2022; revised for clarity in 2026.
World Leading ASP SaaS, PaaS and IaaS Industry Technology & Service Provider!
"from 1988-2001 Maynard L. Dokken and Milinx built the backbone of what ultimately became the future of SaaS, PaaS & IaaS..."
SOHO to SME - Industry Leading ASP SaaS, PaaS & IaaS
Milinx's three main product suites were Milinx Portal suite, Milinx Communicator Suite and Milinx CRM Suite including a portal suite (Milinx Portal Suite), an electronic storefront (miStore) and a content solution (miContent). The communications suite included (miOffice), a unified messaging solution (miMessaging), a Virtual Private Network or VPN (miNetwork), an e-storage cloud solution (miStorage), and payment gateway billing application (miBilling). Market Leading Business Communications, Productivity & e-Commerce Solutions.
HostedOS & miDesktop
ASP Market Leader Business Communications, Productivity & e-Commerce. Top innovations included a Hosted OS for all devices in 2001 with a universal protocol for database access and one profile for all devices.
Offering a computing solution that had all of the features of an operating system, but on a fully hosted basis. Fully hosted at the Milinx Application Data Center for businesses to access their Milinx applications securely through any Internet browser at any time on any computing platform anywhere in the world.[1]
miDESKTOP also provided a unified customer profile so when you accessed your desktop from office, home, anywhere, it would be exactly the same as your last use. It also provided the highest level of security and 24/7 support.
Innovation, Research, Development - Implementation
Innovation, Research & Development with numerous patents[2] were developed in the areas of biometric encryption, voice context e-mail[3], voice recognition, and virtual call center environments. The company built SDK's or "toolkits," to enable ease of customization and design for the many applications that it offered including miPortal services through API's.
Milinx social communities application within a secure ASP space was developed with a "toolkit" for customizable portal interface and services using SDK and API's for clients following IEEE best practices and standards. These social community structures for customer relationship development were the predecessor for social media platforms.
First To Market Cloud Services
The biggest advantage of Web-delivered software? It allowed less in-house maintenance of business software and technical personnel recruitment. Some of the Cloud based features included:
- miDrive a cloud based storage solution
- miNetwork a cloud based VPN service
- Secure encryption service
- VPS or Virtual Private Servers
- DPS or Dedicated Private Servers
- Access to best-practices through partners such as Sun Microsystems and IEEE
Milinx improved the quality of business activities, reduced costs and increased productivity. Private encrypted VPN, data and servers.
SMAP to MMAP Universal Device Access
The goal was simple Universal AnytimeAnywhere access to SOHO & SMB Desktop & Applications.
We built one of the first mobile SMB apps with Java Beans Technology for the Nokia Symbian OS. Milinx defined the Systems/Mobile Application Provider (S/MAP) sector.[4] It was years before Google or others were able to enable these apps through a rebuild of the mobile OS.
Milinx also focused on building a wireless network for access to the UniversalOS and miPortal from a high speed using its Data Center.
ASP SaaS, PaaS and IaaS eCommerce Pay Gateway
These gateways included:
- miStore for online commerce
- miBilling for online payments
- miWireless for anywhere access to ASP services
- M/MAP integrated managed platform
- S/MAP for mobile access to ASP services
Milinx worked with payment providers such as Heartland Payment Systems, one of America's leading payment providers to enable online credit card payments for e-commerce clients hosted by Milinx Business Group, Inc.[5]
Milinx started this journey through AssuredCard (formerly CreditAssure) and was one of the first online payment providers through these sites.
History & Origin of ASP SaaS, PaaS and IaaS
History & Origin of ASP SaaS & ASP PaaS
Origin of ASP SaaS and ASP PaaS
SuccessInc created an ASP (SaaS) multi-tenant gateway and data repository server in 1987-1988.[6][7]
Similar event: SAP (Concur) began as a traditional software company in the early 1990s before transitioning to SaaS in 2014.
ASP (SaaS) Vertical
SuccessInc launched the first vertical application called APP1, focusing on employment listings in 1988.[8]
Similar event: From 2013-2016 industry-specific vertical SaaS solutions incorporating PaaS capabilities to enhance customization and integration included Salesforce. Some notable examples of vertical SaaS companies include Veeva (life sciences), Procore (construction), and Clio (legal) in 2019.
ASP (SaaS) Gateway
SuccessInc created APPNET as an ASP (Application Service Provider) SaaS (Software as a Service) Cloud Computing gateway in 1988.[9] This provided a way to route requests for application providers and manage user accounts, data, and settings.
Similar event: the creation of LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) in 1993 by Tim Howes and the launch of Microsoft's Active Directory in 2000. These technologies also provided ways to manage user accounts and access.
Customizable Application Platform
SuccessInc APPNET created framework for customizable Themes or Applications for any market or industry vertical in 1988.
Similar event: Force.com was launched in 2007, enabling customers to build and install apps on Salesforce's architecture.
Shared User Profile and Data Repository Access:
APPNET provided application providers and users access to Themes and Applications with single login user account in 1988.
Similar event: Salesforce's customizable SaaS CRM platform, launched in 2003, incorporated similar concepts of shared user profiles and centralized data repositories. Additionally, the development of technologies like LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) in 1993 and Microsoft's Active Directory in 2000 further contributed to the evolution of shared user profile and data repository systems.
Multi-tenant Architecture
SuccessInc customized Minix OS provided a multi-channel network gateway for access to APPNET server in 1988 for APPNET providers and user accounts.
Similar event: Salesforce transitioned to a full SaaS model in 2003, introducing multi-tenant architecture and launching the Sales Cloud with Force in 2007.
Cloud-like Storage and Access
SuccessInc had a working ASP Software as a Service (SaaS) or ASP Platform as a Service (PaaS) with cloud-like storage with data exchange in 1988.
Similar event: Cloud storage concepts emerged in the early 1960s, but modern implementations came later, with SuccessInc in 1988 and scalable versions with Milinx in 2000 and Amazon S3 in 2006.
The full dated line, from the 1987 gateway to MarkCrest in 2002, is on the History page.
About this page
This page keeps the original page published at milinx.co/, in its original words. The original page title read: “The Original Milinx - Incubator for Cutting Edge Technology Solutions”. Its description read: “The Original Milinx - World leaders in cloud, wireless, mobile, Saas (ASP), payment gateways, bio-encryption, text-to-speech, voice-response, meta relational databases and more...”. Headings, introductions, captions and reference markers were added to make the record easier to read and to check; a few obvious typing errors were corrected. Text that the old site repeated on many pages (4 blocks of this page) is shown once, where it fits best, and linked from here. Facts follow the record on maynardldokken.com.
References
Numbered in the order they are first cited on this page. Each entry links back to the places that cite it.
- ↑ Milinx Business Group, section “The hosted desktop”. maynardldokken.com.
- ↑ Milinx Business Group Inc: patent applications by assignee. GoodIP. Lists, among others, CA 2,311,871 “Threshold biometric authentication”, CA 2,299,980 “Voice context e-mail” and the CDPD/FM IP communication system.
- ↑ Milinx Business Group, section “Patents and research”. maynardldokken.com.
- ↑ Milinx Business Group, section “Wireless and the mobile application”. maynardldokken.com.
- ↑ Milinx Business Group, section “Alliances and recognition”. maynardldokken.com.
- ↑ Maynard L. Dokken, section “SuccessInc (1987)”. maynardldokken.com.
- ↑ SuccessInc, section “The gateway: how it was built (1987–1988)”. maynardldokken.com.
- ↑ SuccessInc, section “Applications”. maynardldokken.com.
- ↑ SuccessInc, section “The AppNet platform”. maynardldokken.com.