Notes from an All-Macintosh ISP

I interviewed the CEO and founder of an ISP that runs on Macintoshes, and learned something about the early days of the ISP business as well.

by Alex Goldman
Associate Editor, ISP-Planet
[November 17, 2000]

At MacWorld in August, I spoke to Chris Kilbourn, who in 1994 founded digital.forest, an ISP that runs on Macintosh equipment. Further discussion led to an interview by e-mail, which I publish here.

First, some background on digital.forest. digital.forest is a database- and application-hosting company serving small and medium-sized businesses and corporate workgroups around the globe. digital.forest offers both shared- and dedicated-server solutions for Web-enabled databases and applications on Macintosh, UNIX, and Windows platforms. [Alex Goldman] At MacWorld, we talked about equipment, and you said some provocative things about Macintosh vs. Windows hardware.You said that Mac equipment lasts longer and is therefore cheaper in the long run.Would you be able to cite specific examples with specific numbers?

[Chris Kilbourn] This study is 3.5 years old, but representative: http://www.uwm.edu/~als3/mac_or_pc.html

The components used in Macs are generally of a better quality than components used in PCs. Since Apple decides on all the components, you don't have various manufacturers trying to find the cheapest components (this is also part of the reason that Macs are more expensive).

The best example of this is in power supplies. In the six years we've been doing Mac colocation, I've had three Mac power supplies go south. In the past year, I've seen four PC power supplies die.

Another aspect is administrative time. It just takes less time to administer Macs and clients that we put on them. Our client to support rep ratio runs about 300 to 1, sometimes higher. Given that ours is more of a LAN environment, you can look to LAN support environments for comparative numbers.

Just try having one support person for 300 PC users. ;-)

[AG] You use FileMaker for webhosting. Is FileMaker better for providers with many small sites to host?

[CK] I believe you misunderstand the value of FileMaker.

It's not better for the providers, but for the clients. It's the clients that select FileMaker for database-driven web sites.

We were the first company in the world to offer commercial FileMaker hosting, and given our experience, I would not necessarily recommend other providers get into the FileMaker hosting business. Unless you have deep experience with the tool, you will spend months figuring out how to take care of it and keep it stable in a hosting environment.

[AG] Why do you like FileMaker?

[CK] Because our clients like it. It is the easiest database tool to web-enable for under $500. The ease of use of the database has a lot going for it also. You don't need to hire a database programmer to get going with it, (but it would be a good idea if you had a mission-critical site) and there is a good support community out there for clients to draw upon if they get stuck.

[AG] FileMaker is extremely popular in Japan. Do you have much foreign business?

[CK] digital.forest supports clients in 35 different nations. In fact, I wasn't in business more than a few months when I landed my first overseas client in early 1995. It was then that I realized that we were an international company.

I expect that overseas clients will continue to grow as a percentage of or client base. In general, the rest of the world is 2 or3 years behind the US in deployment and acceptance of Internet technologies. The growth we saw in the domestic market during 1996 to 1999 should be paralleled during 2000 to 2003 in our overseas market.

[AG] I'd like to know something about the history of your ISP. I see from your web site that FileMaker is where you started.

[CK] Actually, the roots go back a bit farther than that. I had been doing computer consulting on the Macintosh for several years (installing RAM, hard drives, tune-ups, etc.) and spent some time learning FileMaker at some previous employers.

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