Milinx Business Group, 1997–2001

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Milinx history, 1987 to 2002

From the application gateway SuccessInc built on Minix in 1987–1988 to MarkCrest in 2002: each step is cited and links to the page that tells it.

  • Milinx Business Group
  • A news release
  • The ventures before and after Milinx

  1. SuccessInc builds an application-hosting gateway

    Maynard L. Dokken builds an early application-hosting system on the Minix operating system and runs it as SuccessInc: a network gateway, a shared synchronized database and single-login accounts.⁠[1][2]

  2. The first hosted application

    SuccessInc’s first application is online employment recruitment.⁠[3]

  3. Assured Card

    Dokken founds Assured Card, a Canadian consumer credit company. Its paper enrolment was costly and insecure, which led to a secure electronic registration system.⁠[4] In the same year he develops a package of software services for small businesses.⁠[5]

  4. Assured Credit

    Assured Credit is founded as Assured Card’s development company, to build the secure terminal and the payment gateway.⁠[6]

  5. Milinx is founded

    Dokken founds Milinx, a name derived from Minix; the e-commerce and payment technology of Assured Card and Assured Credit is carried into it.⁠[7][8]

  6. Software sold by subscription

    The sale of his small-business software by subscription over the Internet presages the application service provider model.⁠[5] The Assured Credit Web Portal is in use as an intranet from 1998.⁠[9]

  7. Assured Credit merges into Milinx

    Assured Credit’s work merges into Milinx Business Group through its subsidiary Credit Assure Financial; Milinx carries the hosted gateway into its miCommerce suite. The Web Portal launches as a web portal.⁠[10][9]

  8. Three patent filings

    Milinx announces patent filings for biometric encryption (7 March) and voice-context e-mail (15 March). On 10 March it files “Client-centered secure e-commerce”, a payment intermediary that authorizes payment without disclosing the consumer’s banking details.⁠[11][12]

  9. Netscape alumni join

    Milinx recruits senior technologists from iPlanet, the Sun and Netscape alliance, including a chief technology officer.⁠[13]

  10. A wireless company invests

    Milinx announces an investment of $1 million from Glentel Inc., a wireless telecommunications company; the two would also explore the use of the Milinx business model in Glentel’s wireless networks.⁠[13][14]⁠[15]

  11. The Application Data Center opens

    Milinx begins operations at its own Application Data Center in Vancouver, on Sun Microsystems, Cisco, iPlanet and Oracle technology, with stated capacity for 500,000 e-mail accounts and up to 300,000 users.⁠[16]

  12. MMAP, the platform

    Milinx completes the Milinx Managed Application Platform (MMAP), on which it hosts and deploys its applications as a service.⁠[9]

  13. Toward mobile applications

    Milinx selects Tantalus Communications to bring XML and XSL into its applications, so that they display on wireless telephones and PDAs. The same month it concludes a marketing alliance with AOL Canada.⁠[14][17]

  14. Heartland Payment Systems

    Heartland Payment Systems agrees to enable online credit card payments for Milinx’s hosted e-commerce clients, through the subsidiary CreditAssure.⁠[13] The annual report filed that month counts 106 employees.⁠[17]

  15. World Business Review, ThinkFree and MetaSoft

    Dokken appears on World Business Review, with Vinton Cerf on the expert panel (13 November). Milinx announces a co-branded ThinkFree Office (14 November) and an agreement to acquire Big Online Systems Corp., MetaSoft (16 November), and reports about 2,500 users.⁠[13]

  16. Wireless, and an interview

    Milinx describes a Universal Conversion Service that delivers messages and documents to wireless devices (28 November), and forms its wireless subsidiary, Milinx Wireless (7 December).⁠[14] The Wall Street Transcript interviews Dokken on 11 December; the company then has over 125 employees.⁠[8]

  17. 30,000 active users and miPORTAL

    Milinx reports 30,000 active users (8 March) and launches miPORTAL for business verticals, from a $10,000 set-up fee (20 March).⁠[13][9]

  18. The hosted desktop

    Milinx bills miDESKTOP as “the world’s first fully hosted desktop operating system”, reachable through any Internet browser on any computing platform.⁠[18]

  19. Dokken steps down as President and CEO

    Amid the 2001 dot-com downturn, Dokken steps down as President and CEO, disagreeing with the direction of the new management.⁠[19]

  20. Dokken resigns as Chairman

    Dokken resigns as Chairman. The company’s later decline happened under the management that followed his departure.⁠[19]

  21. MarkCrest

    After Milinx, Dokken forms MarkCrest, a foundation that helps entrepreneurs and inventors develop, protect and monetize their intellectual property.⁠[20][21]

About this page

This page is new: it was added on 4 November 2026 and has no counterpart on the old site. It is drawn from the record on maynardldokken.com and the primary records it cites; every entry is cited and links to the page that tells it.

References

Numbered in the order they are first cited on this page. Each entry links back to the places that cite it.

  1. ↑ Maynard L. Dokken, section “SuccessInc (1987)”. maynardldokken.com.
  2. ↑ SuccessInc, section “The gateway: how it was built (1987–1988)”. maynardldokken.com.
  3. ↑ SuccessInc, section “Applications”. maynardldokken.com.
  4. ↑ Maynard L. Dokken, section “Assured Card”. maynardldokken.com.
  5. ↑ a b Dokken, Maynard L.. The Wall Street Transcript, biography.
  6. ↑ Assured Credit, section “Origins (1996)”. maynardldokken.com.
  7. ↑ Maynard L. Dokken, section “Milinx Business Group (1997–2002)”. maynardldokken.com.
  8. ↑ a b Maynard Dokken, Milinx Business Group Inc. The Wall Street Transcript, CEO interview, 11 December 2000.
  9. ↑ a b c d Milinx Business Group, section “MMAP and the ‘mi’ suite”. maynardldokken.com.
  10. ↑ Assured Credit, section “Into Milinx”. maynardldokken.com.
  11. ↑ Milinx Business Group, section “Patents and research”. maynardldokken.com.
  12. ↑ CA 2,300,347 A1, “Client-centered secure e-commerce”. Google Patents, filed 10 March 2000; published 10 September 2001.
  13. ↑ a b c d e Milinx Business Group, section “Alliances and recognition”. maynardldokken.com.
  14. ↑ a b c Milinx Business Group, section “Wireless and the mobile application”. maynardldokken.com.
  15. ↑ Archived copy of www.milinx.com/company/press/072000.html. Internet Archive, Wayback Machine, captured 7 October 2000. Capture confirmed through archive.org’s availability API.
  16. ↑ Milinx Business Group, section “The data center”. maynardldokken.com.
  17. ↑ a b Milinx Business Group, Inc., annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended 30 June 2000. U.S. SEC, EDGAR, filed 13 October 2000.
  18. ↑ Milinx Business Group, section “The hosted desktop”. maynardldokken.com.
  19. ↑ a b Milinx Business Group, section “Scale, the 2001 collapse, and the exit”. maynardldokken.com.
  20. ↑ Maynard L. Dokken, section “MarkCrest”. maynardldokken.com.
  21. ↑ MarkCrest, section “Origins (2002)”. maynardldokken.com.