After Dave Brown sold his ISP, he spent a few years dispensing advice. But he's back in the game as an equipment vendor with an everything-in-one-box product for small business end users and the ISPs that serve them.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [July 18, 2003]

Dave Brown has a box to sell. For the past few years, the Boise, Idaho-based entrepeneur has been giving advice to investors. But when Meridian, Idaho-based investors The DBSI Group of Companies introduced him to EmergeCore, Brown reorganized the company, refocused marketing efforts on small business, and this year introduced the IT-100 appliance.

To anyone accustomed to the specifications of the latest Wintel hardware, the IT-100, a Linux box supporting a large variety of applications, might seem underpowered. It has a Transmeta Crusoe TM5600 processor that rates 533 MHz, 128 MB of SDRAM, and a 20 GB hard drive. But Brown, now president of EmergeCore, says that's exactly the point.

"Business needs this," he says. "It doesn't need a $10,000 solution. When I was an ISP, businesses would buy a Linux box and manage services themselves so they wouldn't have to pay all those outlandish fees to Microsoft. The product is designed based on the premise that it has to be under $1,500. It's a credit card purchase. It's for small business. It's not a nerd box, and there's no need for anyone to see the Linux shell."

The company is marketing its product under the tag line "IT in a Box," a trademark it has registered. The little box (9.84" x 9.6" x 2.24") provides the following services:

• Reporting
• Alarms and management
• Web upgradeable and remote management
• Mail server
• Webmail
• Router
• Firewall
• DHCP client and server
• NAT
• Web server with bundled website builder
• Proxy server
• VPN client and server
• File sharing
• Wireless access point with RADIUS authentication
• DNS

The services are basic. The reporting is a proprietary system that produces data similar to MRTG. The firewall is a basic Linux firewall. The operating system is the company's Linux-based proprietary CoreVistaWeb OS, an operating system that is not exposed to the end user. Explains Brown, "that was something that used to drive me nuts. Something would go down and the end user would say, 'I didn't touch anything.' Now he really can't."

The box can be managed remotely, and the ISP could manage most services, although Brown expects the ISP will in practice only manage two of them. "End users don't see the proxy server and the VPN. The ISP manages that and gets paid to manage it. On the other hand, most people want to manage their mail server themselves. They don't like to call up their ISP just to add an extra e-mail account."

The box is designed for small business customers with a DSL account, so the Web server does not need to be powerful. A future model, the IT-500, will be designed for businesses with a T-1 line and will be more powerful.

So far, Brown says, the only negative feedback has been about the documentation. "People have reviewed the box (in eWeek, for example) and it holds up. The reviews dinged it on documentation, but that's the easiest thing to fix. We're working on a flash presentation that will show how to set up the box."

The intent of the design is to allow ISPs to offer small businesses a complete set of services without outsourcing, by enabling regular tech staff (i.e., those without expensive certifications) to manage the boxes.

"You don't need a CCIE or an MCSE to manage the box. The bottom line," says Brown, "is that I wish I had the product back then, when I was running my ISP. You don't have to pay high wages for staff. You can charge a monthly fee and not touch the box daily. You give permissions to the end user for the day to day stuff."

The company claims it will announce larger ISP customers soon. So far, noted ISP customers include business-oriented ISP veteran SolutionPro, institutional ISP Advanced Cyber Solutions, and Boise's WISP, Zial Wireless Service.

Pricing and availability
The IT-100 is available now for $1,395.

—End