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04-15-2008 - A Serv-U Retrospective

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Hello,

Welcome to another installment of the RhinoSoft.com newsletter. You are getting this newsletter because you signed up on our web site. If you would like to stop receiving these newsletters, please visit: http://www.RhinoSoft.com/newsletter/unsubscribe.asp

The intent of this newsletter is to give you some pointers on our products. This newsletter discusses the history of Serv-U.

Serv-U 7.0 is Released

Now that Serv-U 7.0 has been released, I've found myself looking back at the history of Serv-U and how much it's changed over the past 13 years. I thought I might share this history with you to provide a little extra perspective on what drove Rob Beckers to originally create Serv-U and what drives us, RhinoSoft.com, to continue its development today.

The Beginnings

While working on Windows 3.1 image-processing software in early 1994, Rob Beckers found that he needed to upload files and make them available for download by others. After scouring the Internet, he found there were no FTP servers available for him to use on Windows 3.1. In fact, there were very few Internet enabled programs at all as WinSock was just becoming available for Windows. After a lot of late nights, and a lot of coffee, Rob had a functional FTP server! It wasn't pretty, but it worked and did what he needed it to do.

After 9 months of "sitting on the shelf", Rob found himself with some time on his hands and tuition payments due for the first year of his PhD. He recalled the FTP server he had written in his free time months ago, and thought it would be a wise investment of his time to polish it up and try selling it through the Internet. He believed that with a little extra work he could even make enough money to buy a new PC. He spent the rest of 1994 and part of 1995 working on his FTP server, releasing it as Serv-U on February 7, 1995. The first release cost $19 and required that customers fill out a form and mail it in together with a check. The new PC came about 4 months later.

First Contact with RhinoSoft.com

Around March 1997, while working on the brand new FTP Voyager, I contacted Cat-Soft to learn about the already well-established Serv-U. I had started to use the popular FTP server to develop and test FTP Voyager, but I needed to get a license so that it would continue running. At that time, Serv-U allowed customers to choose a time-limited trial version, or have it fully functional but stop working after one-hour of service. I selected the one-hour of service option, and needed to get an ID.

I quickly realized that Rob had a vast knowledge of the FTP protocol. I began working with him to enhance the FTP protocol and to make sure FTP Voyager and Serv-U both worked correctly. One significant enhancement that we added was the ability for MDTM to set the modification date and time of a file after uploading. Neither one of us thought about writing a specification for the new functionality, however, it is now an established standard.

Hiring a Publisher

In early 1998, I made the decision to hire a publisher to handle sales, support, and marketing for FTP Voyager. Doing so allowed me to focus all of my efforts on doing what I love - developing software. By this time, Rob had already built a very successful business around Serv-U. However, he soon came to the same conclusion and also decided to hire a publisher.

For several years, the same company represented Serv-U and FTP Voyager. Both Rob and I were allowed to spend all of our time on software development. This was a great time for both products as we were able to add features, enhance existing features, and fix bugs at a rate that wasn't possible before. We worked very closely to meet customers' needs and requests, as well as to follow the changing market trends.

Retaking Control

On March 9, 2000, I released the publishing company of their responsibilities, retaking all aspects of FTP Voyager and what soon became AllegroSurf. On May 15, 2001, Rob released the publisher as well, but decided to hire a new publisher: RhinoSoft.com. Serv-U and FTP Voyager were back together under one company name.

The next 4 years of Serv-U development was a very exciting time. In 2001 came the release of version 3.0 that debuted a brand-new user interface making Serv-U's powerful features more accessible than ever before. By 2002, Serv-U had added support for SSL / TLS encryption, which was expanded upon and improved with better certificate creation and more security centric features throughout 2003. In 2004, Serv-U added support for ODBC storage, on-the-fly data compression, and NT-SAM / Active directory authentication.

Throughout this flurry of development, Rob remained the sole programmer of all things Serv-U related. RhinoSoft.com provided sales, support, and marketing for Serv-U while also coordinating the releases of FTP Voyager to simultaneously debut new features and extensions to the FTP protocol.

Too Much for One Person

In early September 2005, Rob contacted me about the possibility of selling Serv-U to RhinoSoft.com. At that point, Serv-U's evolution in to an enterprise level solution caused it to make demands of his time that are difficult to maintain as the sole developer. The feature request list grew at an unprecedented rate as customers began to realize that Serv-U could provide more than just FTP support for them. In order to ensure the integrity and market place of Serv-U, Rob offered to sell it to RhinoSoft.com, allowing us to address the growing customer demands.

Rob and I spent a good deal of time discussing what customers were looking for and where we thought Serv-U should go. We made several lists of features that needed to be in Serv-U, nearly all of which came from customers like you. Rob's biggest concern was to make sure Serv-U meet your current and future file sharing needs.

Serv-U 7.0 Design & Planning

On January 1, 2006, RhinoSoft.com started work on Serv-U 7.0. Our primary goal was to give customers what they wanted and requested. The list, in order, included: SFTP (via SSH), multiple listeners per domains, better group support, concurrent user storage methods, web-based remote administration, ability to set limits based on time of day, and much-much-much more. After a couple months of working with the original Serv-U, we realized that in order to add these requests we really needed to redesign the product.

The design of the original Serv-U is a model design for the software industry. This original design made the transition from the 16-bit Windows 3.1 to the 32-bit versions of Windows we use today - all the way up to Windows Vista. Many other major programs have failed this test of time and were scrapped with each major platform revision. Serv-U was not one of these programs.

However, in order to satisfy the stated goal of meeting customers' current and future file sharing needs, we determined the best course of action was a redesign built with this long-standing goal in mind. Serv-U has been the Windows file server of choice for over 13 years; we intend to keep it that way as we continue to add to the product and refine its current feature set.

Serv-U 7.0 Design & Planning

From January 1, 2006 through April 2, 2008, most of our development focus has been on Serv-U 7.0. All of our software developers have had a hand in its development, including Doug Papenthien, Jon Voss, Dale Bladorn, and me.

Serv-U Engine - I am the primary developer of Serv-U itself. In addition to being the lead engineer for the project, I also spent almost all of my time on Serv-U itself. On a personal note, I'm usually the one who writes user interface code, but for Serv-U 7.0 the team "volunteered" me to take on the massive task of the engine.

Serv-U Management Console - Doug and Jon are the primary developers of the web-based Management Console. Doug's focus was on a majority of the JavaScript code that makes everything work in your browser. Jon, who is also our company Webmaster, serves as the HTML & CSS guru.

Serv-U Basic Web Client - I originally sketched out the Basic Web Client (BWC) using very basic HTML until it looked something like a directory listing returned by a traditional web server. However, it wasn't long before Jon took over the BWC making it what it is now. From a technical perspective, Jon's BWC work is amazing - much of what is being done we had thought impossible with HTML.

FTP Voyager JV - Dale, our newest developer, developed FTP Voyager JV. Since his background is in C++ and MFC, Dale spent a considerable amount of time understanding Java and its libraries. Near the end of the development process, Doug lent his experience to finalize the code and prepare it for a public release. FTP Voyager JV is turning out to be a terrific addition to Serv-U. The ability to use a full-featured client, without installing software, is a huge benefit for most IT professionals.

Serv-U Installer / Upgrade Utilities - Often overlooked for software updates of this magnitude is the ability to seamlessly upgrade from one version to the next. Doug used his extensive knowledge of Serv-U to write the conversion utility that is integrated into the installer to ensure your users and settings are migrated to the new Serv-U. Without Doug's work, we would all still be re-entering our user accounts by hand.

The resulting product is just about what we expected. Serv-U 7.0 is now a multi-threaded, multi-language, multi-protocol file server. Serv-U 7.0 has now gone through a very extensive beta testing phase and is 100% compatible with previous versions.

Serv-U Feedback

I hope you've enjoyed reading about Serv-U's history. For me, it's been an incredible ride. I still have to pinch myself. I owe this to you, our customers, and to our terrific dedicated staff. Everyone who has worked on Serv-U, from Rob Beckers to the development team here at RhinoSoft.com, thank you very much. We will continue to work very hard to improve and enhance this storied product. Let us know what you want to see included in Serv-U:

http://www.Serv-U.com/support

We really do look at your suggestions. All good suggestions eventually become part of the product; we want Serv-U to work for you. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Try Serv-U and FTP Voyager Free for 30 Days

Download Serv-U:
http://www.Serv-U.com/download/

Download FTP Voyager:
http://www.ftpvoyager.com/download/

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http://www.RhinoSoft.com/sales

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Thanks for reading!

Mark P. Peterson - President
http://www.RhinoSoft.com
Voice: +1(262) 560-9627
FAX: +1(262) 560-9628